Christian Mondrup wrote:
>
> Michael Nyvang wrote:
>
> > The reason I say this, is that the copyright
> > organizations currently are running multiple lawsuits against
> > people who have put music on the web. And they are doing this
> > very aggressively (and I mean *VERY* aggressively) in Europe.
>
> I have the impression that these campaigns are primarily targeted against
> archives of sound resources as mp3 files which are seen to seriously
> threaten the most important income sources of the artists - and not least
> the music recording companies.
Yes that is true, but by the looks of it, this seems only to be
the beginning.
The way the copyright orgs. like KODA view the internet is
essentially as a public broadcasting/publication facility.
And this is new, as it has only been starting to work with
the internet like that the last few years.
Therefore placing sheetmusic *with* midifiles on the net, is
potentially risky these days. And therefore I have made this
suggestion to make sure that there are no excuses for KODA or
the likes, to come and ask Chris to pay 100$ a month for having
Mutopia on the net.
> > An example you all may know about, is the music archive OLGA
> > with sheet music for guitar etc.. AFAIK it has been shut down in 98,
> > and several 1000 songs put up on the web as a voluntary effort
> > has been removed from the web.
>
> There are other free sheet music archives, for example the GMD archive
> (http://www.gmd.de/Misc/Music/scores/) and the Choral Public Domain Library
> (http://www.cpdl.org/).
Yes I know, (I found your music there :-) , but I would think Werner and
the others would also have to watch out now, because as I mentioned
above - the way the copyright orgs. handle music on the internet has
changed within the last few years - in Denmark Werner would be asked to
pay for the music he has on the GMD archive, unless he removes the
midifiles I suppose (as far I understand it).
The new rules is revised every now and then, a Danish example is that
the copyrightholders themselves originally should pay KODA if they
had music of their own on their website, this has as of the 15 june
this year been revised.
> I have myself published music on these archives most
> of it typeset with the free MusiXTeX utilities (and until now a single
> Lilypond based score) which again means that no commercial software producer
> may claim any right to fonts and other software used in my scores. Most of
> the music contained in these archives is witten by composers who died more
> than 70 years ago and therefore should not be covered by restrictions any
> more. This is also the case with most of my scores. As for my own
> compositions also published this way I have carefully got the permissions
> for publishing the lyrics by the poets (or their heirs) and after that
> registered the works at the danish copyright organization KODA. This means
> that while the scores of this music are free the public performance of it
> isn't !
> That means that as far as the music is used for educational purposes
> (which is the scope of some of my scores - there are links to them in the
> web pages of the danish high school music subject) I have given music
> teachers free access to teaching materials as an alternative to commercially
> published scores etc. The educational institutions must, however, pay
> performance fees if the compositions are performed at public concerts.
Exactly, this is what you can do, but there are a number of details I
will comment here (and a very important one as well):
Now it is absolutely okay to keep the royalty praxis I think, as long
this is the way the musiclife works. I have no objection to this (this
is what I make (partly) a living of myself.
There is a guy who specifically advocates this model here:
http://www.ram.org/ramblings/philosophy/fmp.html
But like programmers I think it would be nice if you as a composer
could choose to let some part of your work be completely GPL free.
That is - you could choose to allow others to use it, record it,
play it, put it on the web - yes even modify it (the original will
always be available on-line, so new versions of it will not be
removing the original, and as such it wont be a problem), as long
the material remained free (copylefting in other words).
I have a nutty idea like that, to put a number of computermusic
studies (I call it soundart, or twinkles) on the net, free for
others to grab and use, as long the network of persons doing
this would accept also to share their works, and as long nothing
of this would ever be mixed with unfree samples, or published
on unfree media's.
MY point in the previous mail is that *if you are member of KODA or
similar organizations, then you can not give people this freedom,
not even in parts of your production, as KODA owns the right to
administrate your copyrights for life + 70 years*, there is currently
no flexibility regarding this - either you get out of KODA, or you
can essentially forget about copylefting your music.
To put it shortly:
A contemporary composer can not copyleft any of (hers || his) works,
if (he || she) is member of an organization like KODA. And the risk
for Chris, is that some composers may not be aware of this, and then
the heat come on Chris for "broadcasting" midifiles of protected music.
There are many details regarding this, the scores can be given away,
but not the performance rights, music drama is excluded by these rules,
so in principle you can copyleft an Opera, as long it is always
performed as an Opera, and newer in concert versions.
Anyway, I hope to be able to find a way, so that we as composers can
make a choice, and I think KODA and its relatives, may be possible
to convince, so that it could be possible in the future. After all
it is not commercially sensitive if some members want to GPL some of
their production, as long as they are the only copyright holders.
So Chris I still think you should consider this advice, as things are
these days (maybe even Werner, and the other people who have put a lot
of hard work into these kind of things, should team up and find a common
ground regarding this - just an idea ;-):
> >
> > SO for Mutopia, whatever you do: GET A BULLETPROOF LEGAL ADVICE.
> >
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
My best regards,
Michael Nyvang.
