Coming into the fray late...
On Apr 17, 2007, at 17:33, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
How wonderful if there was an infinite number of new books available
to be
bought and an infinite amount of money to be spent. But such is not the
case. How horrid if second hand books had to be destroyed. How horrid
if
public libraries could not lend books for fear that copyright might be
infringed by a borrower. How sad if teachers (of any kind, anywhere)
could
not use what information and resources they can find to teach with. How
very sad if all this led to the irrevocable loss of information and
knowledge.
Hear hear!
It reminds me of the story I heard one year, when auditing a music
course at the local U (101 level, to allow me to understand what my 7yr
old was talking about <g>). The story may be apocryphal -- I wouldn't
know -- but, according to the prof, once upon a time -- Bach's time --
lots of music was written for trumpets and really good trumpet players
were at a premium for performances, and earning high fees. To keep it
that way, the guilds made it difficult for others to join; they charged
high fees for training (remember, guilds were an equivalent of
vocational school and labour union combined) they lengthened the
apprentice and the journeyman stages, they made it hard for the "new
blood" to pass the exams which would allow the players to have the
title of "master". Ostensibly, it was so that the standards were kept
high. In fact, it was so that the old guard could protect their high
fees by keeping the pool small.
So, what happened? Even before Mozart's time, there were so few trumpet
players worth a d..., that fewer and fewer composers were writing music
using the instrument. Mozart himself "banked" a lot of his music on a
new instrument -- clarinet -- for which there was no inbuilt guild
protectionism.
In the long run, the "old guard" sawed through the limb on which it had
been sitting.
It's something to think about when we insist on the strictest possible
interpretation of copyright, especially as regards the use of library
books or magazines, second-hand materials, etc. Certainly, an author
has the right to limit use -- prohibit making more than one copy etc--
in hopes of boosting the sales of the book. At the same time, the
author is risking long-term loss of knowledge and even interest in the
subject.
In the past couple of weeks -- since I let the 2-Pair Inventions be
placed on on the Arizona U site -- I had several enquiries about
permission to use it. One was from someone who wanted to make a copy,
bind it, and put it in her guild's library -- would I mind? Of course I
don't mind; I'm delighted :) The book had been put together as a
fundraising tool for The Lace Museum; it had done its bit and run its
course as such. I told the lady she had my blessing even if she made a
copy for each of the members of her guild -- she was likely to get a
discount for more copies :) In fact, if she wanted to print off and
bind more of them, to sell at a lace day in order to raise funds to buy
a real book for their library, that's OK with me too.
I think the only use I'd object to -- loudly -- would be if someone
were to print it off/make a DVD of it and sold it *with their own
copyright* prohibiting reproduction. I don't mind it at all if a
*community* profits from my labours, but I'd be willing to get violent
(very un-Libra-like <g>) if I thought some*one* was doing the same
thing, for their own enrichment.
--
Tamara P Duvall http://t-n-lace.net/
Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland)
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