Thanks Graham, it's good to get the straight story! I must say there are certainly some confusing aspects to copyright law. So If I'm understanding you correctly, if I were to transcribe a fugue from an out of copyright source, I have a copyright if I make a mistake and none if I copy it perfectly! What if I transcribe from a copyrighted source and make a mistake (or a lot of mistakes)? Or copy from a copyrighted source only those aspects that exist verbatim in a non-copyrighted version, e.g. notes and rhythms as Bach wrote them but no dynamics or layout added by the editor?
Anyway, I do appreciate the insights. For the time being I'm interpreting her publicly granted rights according to the notice on her web site, i.e free use for purposes other than financial profit. Cheers, Mike On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 6:51 PM, Graham Percival <gra...@percival-music.ca>wrote: > On Sun, Jan 02, 2011 at 12:59:39PM -0500, Michael Ellis wrote: > > We all seems to agree that: > > 1. The "music" of the chorales (the sequences of pitches and > > rhythms notated in the Breitkopf edition) is public domain. > > 2. The Breitkopf edition itself is also in the public domain. > > I haven't checked it myself, but if this Breitkopf edition is on > IMSLP, then yes. > > > 3. Margaret Greentree's XML files do not contain any copyright > > assertions other than for the PDF output. > > "Assertion" is completely irrelevant to the status of being under > copyright or not. If something would normally be under copyright, > then it is under copyright the instant that it is produced in > fixed form. (i.e. as soon as I type each letter of this > paragraph, it is under copyright -- even though I am not going to > append "Copyright (c) 2011 Graham Percival" to this email) > > > Given the above, it seems that an important question is whether her > > reservation of rights applies to distributing material created by > > applying LilyPond to the notation sequences embodied in her XML. > > No. The question is whether her particular rendition of the Bach > chorales in XML can be under copyright. If it is -- and I believe > it can be, especially since somebody noted that her rendition was > not completely accurate -- then all the XML files are under > copyright, and you cannot do (legally) anything with them without > her express permission (with certain exeptions that vary from > country to country). > > > On the other hand, I'm not sure that failing to declare a copyright to > > "Failing to declare a copyright" has no meaning since 1970 or so. > In the first half of the 20th century, that had a legal meaning, > but after one particular major rewrite of copyright law, any "idea > in fixed form" (paraphrased) was under copyright. > > Cheers, > - Graham >
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