On Oct 23, 2007, at 3:59 PM, Noel Stoutenburg wrote:
Next a couple of points about ISMLP: I know that there are copyright concepts in the member states of the EU that are expressly prohibited in the U.S. The 2002 publication by Oxford University Press "Weddings for Choirs" includes Stanford's "Beati quorum via", and claims copyright, though the music has been in the public domain since 1995 under the "death plus 70" rule. The basis for the copyright claim is the layout of the page, not the music. I don't know to whether Austria subscribes to the notion of "graphic copyright" or not, but if they do, it may be that while the music of some of the composers whose music is being objected to are in the public domain by virtue of age, that scans of the pages of later works may subject to copyright, and therefore infringing in some jurisdictions.
I have to disagree with this sentiment. While I recognize that, as a matter of law, the status of "graphic copyrights" in the United States is ambiguous and arguable -- exactly the sort of ambiguity in copyright law I complained about elsewhere -- as a matter of political philosophy, I have no problem whatsoever with graphic copyright.
If you make a new edition of a public domain work, your edition ought to be protected, and I don't think there's any benefit in requiring it to meet some hard-to-pinpoint standard of added creative value. As anyone who has taken it upon himself to re-engrave an old score knows, it's almost impossible NOT to add some editorial value. The very act of making an edition is interpreting it in some way -- if it weren't, you'd just photocopy the original and not make an edition at all.
If some editor digs up some old score rotting in a library and creates a practical and usable score of it, that's a valuable service and it deserves the encouragement that copyright protection provides. The key is that this editor has done absolutely nothing to make the piece *less* available to others. If you don't want to pay for his edition, fine. Just go to the same library he did and look at the original. Use it to make your own edition if you like.
If EU's cease and desist order simply said: What you do with other editions of these pieces is your own business, but don't publish any scans of OUR editions, I would support them 100%.
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