On Tue, 21 Mar 2000, Peter Chubb wrote:
> >>>>> "David" == David Chan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> David> If all you have is the ability to
> David> *obtain* the sheet music for nothing, and not the right
> David> *perform* it, then you haven't really got any extra freedoms
> David> than if you just bought the sheet music from a shop (except
> David> it's cheaper and more convenient).
>
> Acutally, you do gain things. If I buy a copyright music book, then
> there is no permission to arrange, to create new parts (e.g., write
> out a clarinet part in b-flat), copy (create 8 scores, because we
> prefer to play from score than from parts) or anything. With music
> from Mutopia I can do all that, and more.
It does surprise me that those things don't count as fair use - especially
creating copies in a convenient format for your own personal use, which is
legal for, say, recorded music. But I realise there are special rules for
printed music in the Bern Convention.
> David> At the moment, I don't know of any site, apart from Mutopia,
> David> which is devoted to "free" (downloadable, modifiable,
> David> performable, recordable) music
[...]
> http://www.cpdl.org/ --- the choral public domain library
>
> Its licence does I think what you want.
Ok I stand corrected! (This license is a copyleft license not a BSD-style
license) This would be a good candidate for a copyleft license for
Mutopia. As much as possible of it is copied from the GPL, which gives it
a better chance of being legally watertight. There's only two points
about it which concern me:
(1) It has the phrase "Public Domain" in its title which I think is a bit
dangerous because people may take this to mean the music is in the
public domain (accidentally or on purpose). I know there's no
ambiguity if you read carefully.
(2) It's clear from the preamble that royalty-free performance is
allowed, but it's not explicitly stated in the actual body of the
license. In the hypothetical situation, a big publisher might make
a derivative work but try to charge royalties for performance. They
could use big, expensive lawyers to argue that nothing in the legally
binding section of the license prohibits this.
(3) People can distribute computer-generated modified versions without
making the source code available. (I've written at length before about
why I consider this to be essential so I won't do so here)
I realise that (1) and (2) are worrying about ambiguities which no
sensible person would be confused by. But good lawyers are very good at
magnifying tiny ambiguities, and Mutopia hasn't got the means to fight a
legal battle unless it gets thrown out of court at the first stage.
Do you have any comments about these things? Legal licenses are hard to
read so if I've misinterpreted the CPDL then I'm sorry!
David
--
A problem shared is a problem squared.
