Jack Campin writes:
| [Tom Anderson]
| > I don't have the full story, but I remember reading that there
| > has been an ugly struggle over the rights of his music.
|
| If the Shetland Times has any say in the matter, don't expect them
| to hand over anything free of charge. Remember their lawsuit over
| the rival Shetland paper's website? (The first litigation in the
| world over plagiarism on the Web, if I remember right).
Interesting. I haven't read anything about this story. I had noticed
that when I checked various Shetland historical and cultural web
sites, I didn't seem to see much mention of him. This did strike me
as curious, considering what he did for Shetland's history and
culture. Maybe this is the explanation.
This is not surprising, of course, but it is a bit disappointing. Tom
was one of the people who was really dedicated to bringing Shetland's
traditional music to the world. He did a lot to get people involved,
especially young people. It's somewhat of a shame that corporate
financial interests would interfere with his work.
This probably means that I should only use his "trad" tunes, and try
to avoid the ones that he wrote, unless I can get explicit permission
to use them. So far, I haven't received any replies to the messages
that I sent to a few Shetland sites (including the Shetland Times).
This is another example of something that I've suggested a few times
in the past: One of the effects of things like ABC on the Internet
will be to strengthen the position of traditional music. The world's
archives are moving to the Net quickly now, and we are reaching the
point that a lot of people use it as their first source of
information. If I'm looking for a tune, I'm more likely to use one
that I find than one that I don't find. Since there's pressure to not
put new music on the Net, I'm more likely to find older music for
which there's no copyright problem. And since I'm always under time
pressure to find something, what I'll use will more and more be the
older material.
A quick check with my tune finder with several of Tom's compositions
and trad tunes in Ringing Strings shows that this is true now. The
trad tunes that I asked for are mostly there (though not always in
his versions). His compositions mostly aren't there. So people using
the Net to find tunes are less likely to find his compositions than
they are to find the trad tunes that he published.
Yet another in a long list of examples of why the current concept of
"intellectual property" is doing more harm than good.
Well, maybe in another century, someone will discover Tom's tunes in
some hard-copy archive and introduce them to the world. I'll go on to
something else. There's no shortage of things to keep me busy ...
Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music & Culture List - To
subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
