> If you put a file full of abc tunes on the web, presumably it's so that > people can download it. Otherwise, there is no obvious motive to > putting it on the web at all. And most users are going to feed it to > one or more of the extant abc tools. All of them that I know of have > the ability to cut out single tunes.
I'm not trying to prevent them from extracting what they want from the file so long as they READ IT FIRST. When a file contains stuff like corrupt copies of tunes from manuscripts where the only indication there's anything wrong is the explanatory text, you are NOT doing anybody any favours by letting them fish the tune out randomly by name with software that withholds the context to explain what they've got. > And, in reality, extracting single tunes is the only thing that my > tune finder does. So if you don't want that, maybe I oughta just not > index your site at all. That's easy enough ... For most of the files on my site it doesn't matter in the least if they're randomly extracted. For others it matters so much that I won't have the file on the site or available to the public at all if that can be done. The decision needs to be made on a per-file basis, not per-site. For virtually every other category of information available on the Web (mp3 files, medical journal papers, porno image collections, conference boards, documentation sites with disclaimers you have to agree to...), being listed in an index doesn't have to confer automatic unconditional access to the content. Why should ABC be uniquely inflexible? (The most determined "agree to this first and no use other than as specified" clause I've ever seen is the one at the start of <http://www.esotericarchives.com/juratus/juratus.htm> - and no, he isn't making it up, that condition is in the original source). A level of control that would be reasonably futureproof would be to also allow a concise way of marking individual tunes within files as not downloadable in isolation. I don't need that, but maybe somebody else might (e.g. if the file is just one part in a band arrangement - someone who gets the second trombone part from a brass band setting of "Arkansas Traveller" when they just want the tune is not going to be a happy customer, while if they got the cornet part they'd probably have what they want). =================== <http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/> =================== Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music & Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
