From: John Howell <[email protected]> Reply-To: <[email protected]> Date: Sat, 10 Jul 2010 13:01:44 -0400 To: <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Finale] OT: Copyright and downloadable music
> If there IS a single problem, it's obviously the one we've all been > aware of all the time: the progress of technology has made new > crimes not only possible but really, really EASY! Copyright infringement is generally not a crime. There are criminal penalties in the Copyright Statute, but they only apply in instances where someone is clearly making a business of infringing-- the folks who steal digital prints from studios, mass-press DVDs of films and sell them, for example. What we're talking about here (sharing mp3s on LimeWire, trading sheet music on PianoFiles, etc.) is civil infringement. It's not even theft in the legal sense. The Supreme Court has definitively ruled that copyright infringement is infringement, not stealing or theft. Two entirely different things. > But two wrongs still don't make a right, never have, never will. So you believe that Rosa Parks should have just given up her seat? I guess the question is how you view the law and whether you believe there is ever a situation where a law is so obviously wrong on its face that breaking it isn't a wrong in the first place. > But some people get upset when they are actually TREATED as property. Yep, just as some people get upset when animals and pets are treated as property, even though they are just that under the law. Quite a few couples have divorced and argued over who gets to keep the dog, only to have the court order the dog sold and the proceeds split, as it would do with any other disputed asset. Sometimes the law and the human heart don't quite mesh. > I also have to point out the confusion that comes from using the term > "the artist's rights." All sorts of scary stuff is happening in Europe under the umbrella of "artists' rights". There's a proposal (don't know whether it's made it into law yet) to give sculptors and painters the right of first refusal on sales of their work. Under such a system, if you're lucky enough to buy a painting from the next Picasso, early on in his career when he's unknown, and get the painting for cheap, only to have it appreciate years later into the millions due to the artist's fame, you can't sell it and recoup that investment unless the artist lets you. He can buy it back from you at the price for which he originally sold it. Fantastic, huh? _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
