CCed to all who have contributed to this thread so far.
It looks like we've got a number of conflicting views about the
copyright on Mutopia, so we've got to come to some kind of agreement
about what to do.
Firstly, I'll just make it clear that I am all in favour of people
selling properly printed / bound music from the Mutopia archive; I
realise what I said in my previous e-mail was a bit unclear.
I also agree with what Han-Wen said about music for which the composer
is still alive; ie. the music is still in copyright - it does seem
sensible to keep this kind of music out of Mutopia, at least for the
time being. There are several reasons for this, but chiefly that various
composers are going to want different controls and copyrights put on
their music. This would be difficult to achieve within the spirit of
Mutopia, so if a composer wants to publish his/her own music for free
then they can always make themselves a home page, or use Werner's music
archive (http://www.gmd.de/Misc/Music/scores/). But where do we draw
the line - do we allow modern arrangements of out of copyright music,
for example?
Mark Seaborn wrote:
> If you take a piece of music that is out-of-copyright in all but its
> engraving and convert it to mudela, can it then be usefully
> copyrighted? Copyright exists in an engraving of music separately
> from the music itself, but I doubt whether this extends to copyright
> in a mudela representation. Could someone take the mudela, convert it
> to some other format or engrave it, and make it proprietary? Could
> they even claim copyright on Lilypond's output? How do you tell that
> the music passed through the phase of being in mudela from Mutopia?
<snip>
> Is it worth copylefting public domain music? If it's not going to
> impede the `information hoarders', it might just create a legal
> minefield to impede legitimate users; legal wrangling wastes time.
> Copyleft is not always necessary when a project reaches a certain
> size. eg. The BSD Unices remain free, despite there having been
> dead-end proprietary forks. Once Mutopia reaches a certain size, it
> will get well-known enough that people will know that they can get the
> source to music, without copyleft licences requiring commercial
> printers to tell them that they can. Unlike software, the source to
> music is always available even if not electronically. Unlike the GNU
> project, Mutopia isn't creating any new works.
What I wanted to stop people doing was taking one of the Lilypond
source files from the website, removing the copyright message, selling
it and preventing people from copying what they've sold. If you do not
copyleft the music then is there anything to stop people doing this?
On the other hand, as Mark said above, is there any way we can prove
that the music came from the Mutopia archive - the publishers could
just claim that they typed it in themselves. This situation could
arise with Urtexts, but not with editions (where we could copyleft the
editorial remarks) or arrangements.
But do we want to copyleft the editions and arrangements? Would we
actually achieve anything by doing this, or just confusing people?
If we do decide to copyleft anything, then which licence should we use?
Several people have suggested the GNU GPL (General Public Licence) but
this has the major disadvantage that anyone selling printed copies of
the music must also be able to distribute electronic copies of the
Mudela input file "source code"; I quote from the GPL:
> For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether
> gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that
> you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the
> source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their
> rights
This is fine for computer program source code, but musicians aren't
actually going to be interested in the Mudela "source code" unless they
use a computer themselves and have Lilypond, in which case they are
almost certainly going to be able to access the Mutopia archive online.
Then there's the OPL (Open Content Licence). As I interpret it, it does
allow selling of the Open Material although you're only supposed to be
charging for distribution, the media, etc. so I guess this is slightly
ambiguous. I quote from the OPL:
> You may at your option charge a fee for the media and/or handling
> involved in creating a unique copy of the OC for use offline, you may
> at your option offer instructional support for the OC in exchange for
> a fee, or you may at your option offer warranty in exchange for a fee.
> You may not charge a fee for the OC itself.
One thing the OPL doesn't cover at all, however, is performance of the
music, which could confuse people reading it. This would obviously only
be applicable to arrangements, however.
So, in all, we have three classes of music on Mutopia:
1. Urtext music which is entirely out of copyright.
2. Music edited especially for Mutopia, the notes are out of copyright
but the edited remarks aren't.
3. Music arranged especially for Mutopia, although the tune is out of
copyright, the notes themselves aren't.
I think by far the simplest method, and the one that will make the
music available as widely as possible to as many people is to place the
whole lot in the public domain. If editors/arrangers don't like this
then they are free to publish their music online elsewhere.
Chris
PS. I'm away on holiday from Thursday 22nd July for just over two weeks
so any e-mail sent to me then probably won't be replied to until I
return.
--
Chris Sawer - Sussex, England - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
