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Atte Andr=E9 Jensen writes:
| > Y'know, I've gotten a number of email messages from jazz musicians
| > wondering the same thing. ...
|
| And one of them is me! What stalled me is the issue of copyright. I would
| not have an official collection of abc's on my sitespace without that in
| place.=20
My experience so far says that this may not be that big a deal. Make
sure that your main page has a notice to the effect that you aren't
sure of the copyright status of a lot of the tunes, and anyone who
knows should send you email. Also say that if a tune's rightful owner
objects to it being there, you will remove it and replace it with a
copyright notice. And, most important, say that an alternative is to
add a copyright notice, email address and URL to the ABC headers if
they prefer.
In my various email contacts with tune writers, so far I've had only
one who didn't want their tune in ABC on my site. What typically
happens is that they don't have a clue about ABC. So I send them my
brief intro, and also a copy of their tune in ABC. I ask them to edit
it, and to suggest the copyright notice, email address and URL they'd
like to see in it. They invariably send it back with this
information. I think that most people realize pretty quickly that the
ABC file is not really much of a competition for a printed copy, and
is no competition at all for any recordings. They also realize that
having their email address and URL in the file is free advertising.
It is that, but it's also attribution that I like to see in all my
ABC files.
I'd bet that the composers of jazz tunes will mostly respond the same
way. Be prepared to send them a brief intro to ABC. I have a couple
at:
http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/music/abc/doc/
You can copy them, and modify them however you like, maybe with one
of the jazz standards as the example.
Chances are that you'll also be asked to remove one or two tunes, but
if you're prepared for that and have a friendly notice to that
effect, you probably don't have any real legal worries.
And the few who don't give you permission are probably hurting their
own pocketbooks. I've received a fair number of requests for printed
copies of the tunes in my collection. I'd guess that Henrik and
Richard and the owners of other large ABC sites also get such
requests. So far, I've said "No" and referred people to some of the
music publishers and book sellers. Ultimately, online stuff doesn't
really hurt sales of printed copies, because books are just too
convenient (as long as they open flat on a music stand ;-).
The main thing that online archives do is make it easier for people
to find what they want. A guaranteed reaction to finding tunes online
is "I like these tunes; where can I find more like them?" If there
are links that lead to the printed copies of tune collections, they
will also lead to sales. You want to educate the publishers to this,
as subtly as you can.
So my advice is to put what you have online now. And send me the URL.
Or post it to this list and any other relevant lists that you know
of, with maybe a hint that you'd like to find others to help with the
online jazz fake-book project. And collect URLs for online sellers of
the printed fakebooks. If they give you any hassle, just let them
know that if you can't include a few of their tunes, you will also
remove the link to their site.
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