Help: Copyrite and Public Domain

Subject: Copyrite and Public Domain
From:
Date: 12 Aug 99 - 11:48 PM

I'm totally lost and here's my first shot at some sort of direction.

I've recently been given the job of putting together a songbook for my guild. I have lots of sources for sheet music of various folk songs and madrigals that we would want to include, but how do I find out about the legality of reprinting music in my own collection?

thanks, Michelle

Subject: RE: Help: Copyrite and Public Domain
From: katlaughing
Date: 13 Aug 99 - 12:36 AM

Hi, Michelle, someone who knows more about this than me, will no doubt post on here and hopefully answer some of your questions. But int he meantime, you should read through this thread.

It has a lot of good discussion and information in it. You might have to pick through it a bit to get some answers, but it is worth it.

Also, you could do a Forum Search for other threads which have had something to do with copyright. The thread above has info in its messages about the UK and the US and where to get more info.

Good luck,

katlaughing

Subject: RE: Help: Copyrite and Public Domain
From: SeanM
Date: 13 Aug 99 - 12:58 AM

*sniffing*

Guild?

Do we have another rennie in the crowd?

If you belong where I think you do (SoCal REC Renfaire), then chances are that just about 90% of what you're looking at is public domain.

A good start is to look at the credit given on the sheet music. It'll give you a name to look for to determine if you're dealing with public domain music or someone's copywrighted work. And if it says 'Traditional', then the chances are that you're safe.

Now I'm taking a flyer here, but I've heard the 'michelf' moniker before... if the guild you're working with runs the smaller circuits then I'd also say that you don't have much to worry about at all. The reality of the situation is that unless you have substantially better contacts than anyone else on the circuit that I know, I'd be willing to bet that your group isn't using these songs to record or make a profit - these are the two areas that the Copywright Hounds sniff out and attack over for the most part.

Good luck! Maybe at some point we can exchange materials...

M

Subject: RE: Help: Copyrite and Public Domain
From: MMario
Date: 13 Aug 99 - 08:56 AM

Bardic Guild, Mayhaps?
Don't forget that even if a SONG is public domain the arrangement and the printed versions can also be copyrighted.
So you can't just take a printed sheet of a traditional song and xerox it.

In other words, your best bet even for public domain songs is to make sure you do original transcriptions...

MMario (who happens to be Bard #002.55)

Subject: RE: Help: Copyrite and Public Domain
From: SeanM
Date: 13 Aug 99 - 01:39 PM

Personally, I'm waiting for Microsoft Bardic2000...

(Sorry. Couldn't resist)

M

Subject: RE: Help: Copyrite and Public Domain
From: MMario
Date: 13 Aug 99 - 01:49 PM

MicrosoftBardic2000 is garuanteed totally incompatible with any previously published material. It WOULD serve as automatic copyright protection.*eg*

Subject: RE: Help: Copyrite and Public Domain
From: SeanM
Date: 13 Aug 99 - 04:56 PM

Ah, but don't forget the added ability of the B2K to add completely inapproptiate bridges and chord structures... and then render it impossible to remove them.

M

Subject: RE: Help: Copyrite and Public Domain
From: Legal Eagle
Date: 13 Aug 99 - 05:39 PM

I think you are in the USA. The copyright office of the Library of Congress does some handouts which you may find useful. Basically, copyright usually lasts for the life of the author and 70 years and then to the end of the year. In the USA there are other rules for "works made for hire". Official Library of congress searches are quite cheap ($20, I think) but have from time to time been slow. Once I waited 8 months for one, but I think they are trying to keep more up to date now.

It is true that typographical arrangements and musical arrangements of public domain stuff can still themselves be protected. In the US, a song is usually regarded as one work, so if there were co-operative tune and lyrics by different authors you have a joint work and copyrihgt is timed by reference to the last author to die. This is logocally impossible if someone puts new words to an old tune or vice versa, but I need to research what happens in practice.

In the UK a tune is a separate work from its words.

Step 1 Find out who wrote it and when they died (can be hard)

Step 2 Check if you are dealing with an arrangement and do same for any arranger.

Step 3 If you have a printed piece of music, don't photocopy it. I'd have to check the duration of US copyright in the typographical arrangement but It is bound to be over 25 years and perhps longer, and most sheets of dots fall apart before that.

Step 5 Check what you can do without infringing. In teh US the fair dealing exemptions are wider than England, and also the US haas a "provate purposes" exemption which is wider tahn ENgland. DOn't forget it's "Public" performance that is controlled by copright.

Sorry about the keyboard work.

Subject: RE: Help: Copyrite and Public Domain
From: T in Oklahoma
Date: 13 Aug 99 - 07:15 PM

The US does not have a "published edition" copyright.

The copyrightability of arrangements and editions is a question about which law review articles are written. One article which touches on the question is at This article by Prof. Paul Heald .

The theory is that not just any arrangement qualifies as "original" and is the subject matter of copyright.

As usual in internet discussion nothing in this post constitutes legal advice, or establishes a lawyer-client relationship, etc.

Subject: RE: Help: Copyrite and Public Domain
From:
Date: 14 Aug 99 - 12:25 PM

Another article by prof. Heald which discusses the standard of originality for derivataive musical works (and hence, the copyrightability or noncopyrighability of editions and arrangements of otherwise public domain music) appeared in Duke Law Journal, vol 46. It isn't available on the web so far as I know, but an abstract is available here at http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dlj/back/vol46-2/abstrcts/heald.htm . Two footnotes from it are quoted here , at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/eldredvreno/choir.html.

Subject: RE: Help: Copyrite and Public Domain
From: SeanM
Date: 14 Aug 99 - 02:11 PM

Another (serious) thought...

If you're dealing in older forms of music, a couple names to look for are Ravenscroft, Tudor, Tallis and some others whose names escape me for the moment.

All of these composers have been dead for centuries. Check the arrangements, though. Sometimes they are modern.

M

Subject: RE: Help: Copyrite and Public Domain
From:
Date: 14 Aug 99 - 05:02 PM

Cool beans, thanks everybody.

And yes I am a rennie, and as far as I know, I'm the only Michelf out there. And if you went to RPFS this year you prolly heard it. I'm rather loud.

And yes I'm from the Bard's Guild.

This has gotten me off to a great start, if you have anything more to add please keep posting.

-Michelf Bard #005, Bard of Discordia & Music Editor

Subject: RE: Help: Copyrite and Public Domain
From: SeanM
Date: 15 Aug 99 - 04:53 AM

Suspected as much...

I'm one of the happy Singing Seadogs, stuck up next to the joust...

OOC... What particularly are you looking for? Depending on the level of skill in your particular group, you may want to reconsider the madrigals. Trust me on this one.

As for folk, as I said... drop me a line and we can talk. I've got about 300 lyric sheets, and about 200 tab.

M

Subject: RE: Help: Copyrite and Public Domain
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 15 Aug 99 - 07:43 PM

T in Oklahoma

I don't have Nimmer readily available here. I once read it from cover to cover. It took me a week!

The conventional wisdom in teh UK is that even before our 1956 Act created express typographical arragnement copyright, protection might have been claimed as an engraving or a photograph (perhaps, som originality arguments onthis point).

I wonder why these aarguments would not birng typographical arrancementw withinthe definition in the USA of a pictorial or graphic work (your S.101). Can you cite something more detailed?

Subject: RE: Help: Copyrite and Public Domain
From: T in Oklahoma
Date: 15 Aug 99 - 09:28 PM

Richard Bridge:

The usual disclaimers apply: I am not a lawyer, this post is not legal advice and does not establish a lawyer-client relationship, etc., etc.

The U.S. copyright office will refuse to register a claim of copyright in a "mere reprint", according to stuff I have seen. And I have also heard that there is no US protection for typeface. That would seem to rule out "pictorial work" status for anything except very artsy layouts, such as when variations in boldness and spacing of very fine print are used to make the whole page appear from a distance as a picture. If the picture were original but the text was PD in such a case, presumably then one could copy the text, but not in such a way as to reproduce the picture. That's the only hypothetical I can imagine under US copyright law that would come close to having the effect of the UK's layout-copyright. (See below for remarks on trade-dress law).

A recent case in the Southern District of New York held that photographic reproductions of public domain works of art, if they faithfully reproduce the originals (rather than being interpretive transformations) are not original and are not the subject matter of copyright. This case was decided twice, once under UK law and once under US law, and reached the same result both times. The case was called Bridgeman Art v. Corel, and I can get a cite for you if you like. Another recent case in the Second Circuit, Matthew Bender v. West, might also be relevant.

So as near as I can figure, under US copyright law one can make a straight photocopy of an entirely public domain work, as long as no original matter is copied (such as original footnotes) and sell it in direct competition with the publisher whose work is copied, though I suppose most competitors would scan the text and change the font and layout -- very simply done with modern computers -- to fit their own tastes in such matters. In a few very special cases involving "time sensitive" matter, state unfair-competition law might give the first publisher a cause of action, but I don't see how music or literature could be "time sensitive". Trademark and trade-dress law in some cases might complicate copying. Publishers who sell Beatrix Potter books in competition with Warne are required, I think, or at least strongly advised, to make their editions a different size, and give them different covers, from the Warne editions, since otherwise Warne can complain that the competitor is trying to confuse buyers as to the source of the competing editions--trying to pass the competing editions off as Warne editions. Assuming I'm reading the law right on this point (see disclaimer above), the trade-dress law in cases like this might have a similar effect to the UK's "published edition" copyright, mightn't it?

T

Subject: RE: Help: Copyrite and Public Domain
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 16 Aug 99 - 12:20 AM

G'day Legal Eagle,

I'm interested to read that copyright, in America, persists for 70 years after the death of the author. As I understand it, in Australia the copyright subsists for 50 years after the author's death.

This may clear up the method by which an American firm claims to hold the copyright in "Waltzing Matilda" - even though 'Banjo' Paterson, who wrote the words, died in 1941 and Marie Cowan, who never claimed to write the tune she arranged ... died in 1939, whereupon her husband made a posthumous claim of composition. (Copyrights live on!)

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: Help: Copyrite and Public Domain
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 16 Aug 99 - 03:50 AM

I am a lawyer (English). I'd love the UK citation. It fits the argumetn I have heard about originality in Photos.

I don't know when Oz is going to join Europe and the USA (the latter thanks to Sonny Bono) at 70 years but Berne wil ssoon,

Subject: RE: Help: Copyrite and Public Domain
From: T in Oklahoma
Date: 16 Aug 99 - 08:47 PM

Richard Bridge,

The citations to Bridgeman Art Library Ltd. v. Corel Corp. are as follows:

The November ruling (Bridgeman I) is at 1999 Copyright Law Decisions #27859, p. 31,118 (S.D.N.Y. November 13, 1998); at 25 F. Supp. 2d 421; and 49 USPQ.2d 1091. This is the case in which the US court decided to apply UK law in the case, and reached the decision that the exact reproductions of two-dimensional artworks were not original.

The February ruling (Bridgeman II) is at 50 USPQ.2d 1110 (S.D.N.Y. February 18, 1999). In this case the court decided to re-visit the issue. I suspect this was partly out of respect for Professor Patry, who sent the court a letter criticising its choice of law. Bridgeman Art Library also called the court's attention to a precedent known as Graves' case, L.R. 4 Queen's Bench 715 (1869). The court could have refused to re-open the matter but it held that "the issues...are significant beyond the immediate interests of the parties" and allowed the additional submissions to be considered. This time, it decided that its earlier choice of law was probably mistaken, and decided the case again using US law. The conclusion it reached was just the same as in November: exact reproductions of two-dimensional public domain artworks are not original for copyright purposes. Then it addressed the matter of Graves' case and, citing Laddie, Prescott, & Victoria, held that Graves' case either wasn't applicable (possibly applying to different facts) or was no longer good law (the concept of originality having developed somewhat since 1869.)

The February opinion is available on-line here or, if that doesn't work, through the following procedure:

1) Point browser here and click on "proceed to courtweb". This should bring up an interface to an opinion searcher.

(2) Clear the date field (3) Set the docket number to 97-cv-06232 (4) Set judge field to "all judges" or "Lewis A. Kaplan" (5) Click on "run report"

A little way down the page will be a link to a PDF file of the February opinion.

Subject: RE: Help: Copyrite and Public Domain
From: Okiemockbird
Date: 18 Jan 00 - 11:42 PM

A link to the February opinion not requiring a pdf reader is here.

T.