Seriously thoughtful How Copyright broke. Cory Doctorow

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Sounds like the discussion a while back about putting a lot of classical music back into copyright so the descendants (direct or collateral) of say J. S. Bach would be able to collect royalties.

Ye gods. Was that serious (as in, did someone really consider it)?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Ye gods. Was that serious (as in, did someone really consider it)?

It was brought up in a music discussion group where someone mentioned that there was going to be an attempt to get the EU bureaucracy interested in supporting it. I don't know how far if anywheres it went. It just stuck with me for it's sheer chutzpah. "My however many times great grandparent was a child of J. S. Bach or one of his 5 musical children and I should be getting money for use of their music!"

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Sounds like the discussion a while back about putting a lot of classical music back into copyright so the descendants (direct or collateral) of say J. S. Bach would be able to collect royalties.

It would only happen if some big corporations thought they could own copyright.

Of course an actual performance and recording of it of PD material has "performance copyright". You can't make and distribute copies of J. S. Bach CDs. I think in the USA they have made most recordings since 1928 be in copyright, even if it had previously expired?

Music copyrights:
Composition of the actual music.
Lyrics.
Each layout of the composition and lyrics (so you can transcribe and republish PD content, but not copy and distribute a new edition).
Translation of Lyrics (even if original PD).
A particular transposition for other instruments, or other new arrangement.
The live performance, so you have no right to record that personally even at it.
A legitimate recording of the live performance (studio or public).
The final distributed mix of a live or studio.
A broadcast (live or recording) is copyright and can only be recorded for personal use.
A cover version of a non-PD work has to pay composer royalty, but has its own performance/recording copyrights.

Some countries' radio & TV might pay a composer royalty, but be illegally not paying performance/recording royalties.

So a "royalty free" J. S. Bach needs you to find a PD edition of an arrangement and a bunch of musicians, unless you want ancient 78s (HiFi is from about 1935).

[bizzybody]

Adding this to my when I get rich bucket list. Assemble an orchestra to perform ALL the old classical music not covered by music notation copyright and release the lot as public domain recordings.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by bizzybody

Adding this to my when I get rich bucket list. Assemble an orchestra to perform ALL the old classical music not covered by music notation copyright and release the lot as public domain recordings.

You need a signed release from each musician, no matter if well paid or a volunteer. I've lovely live recordings I can't use as I didn't know to do it and now I don't know how to contact the musicians. They could come looking for money if I successfully published the music, even for free.

[memory_dump]

Originally Posted by Quoth

You need a signed release from each musician, no matter if well paid or a volunteer. I've lovely live recordings I can't use as I didn't know to do it and now I don't know how to contact the musicians. They could come looking for money if I successfully published the music, even for free.

Sounds like you solved the problem of how to contact the musicians. Publish the music, and wait for them to contact you.

[bizzybody]

A quite ridiculous Fun With Copyright issue was when a programmer who made an Energizer rabbit computer screen saver got the attention of Eveready batteries. They wanted to make it an official thing, with the code cleaned up and various other stuff done to it.

They were just about to release it when someone asked where the programmer got the drum beat sound. He'd just kept a tape recorder ready so when the commercial came on he held the microphone up to the speaker.

Oh, noooo! That won't do! That's part of a *copyrighted* production! Or there *might* be some copyright issue, nevermind that Eveready had paid for the TV advertisement and should own any copyrights to the production.

So Eveready hired a recording studio and a bass drum player to come in and hit the drum one time - *thump*. That was then digitized for use in the screen saver. Nevermind it sounded exactly the same as the TV commercial drum beat. Eveready's executives and lawyers could sleep soundly with the knowledge that there was no possibility of anyone suing them over one simple drum hit.

Here's the article https://medium.datadriveninvestor.co...y-4d277fca3279

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by memory_dump

Sounds like you solved the problem of how to contact the musicians. Publish the music, and wait for them to contact you.

I thought of that, but don't like it.

That's the Internet Archive approach to ignoring copyright. They've one way beyond being a wayback or archive/backup of web pages. They should have stuck at that.