Klarinet Archive - Posting 001088.txt from 1997/11

From: Neil Leupold <nleupold@-----.edu>
Subj: Re: Public domain and copyrights
Date: Sat, 29 Nov 1997 14:21:47 -0500

On Sat, 29 Nov 1997, Craig E. G. Countryman wrote:

> but it seems to me that in this forum, ignorance would be somewhat
> acceptable as a defense. If I was to persist in doing something I KNEW
> was illegal that would be wrong.

It might be a different matter if it were the Klarinet forum
to which you were defending yourself in the case of copyright
infringement. My comments, however, were with regard to the
law, not the arbitrary sentiment of the list. Not to worry.
We do our best to follow the rules, but nobody can know all of
them. Sometimes we discover them the hard way, by breaking one
first and being punished, or by breaking one and being granted
leniency for a first offense. Personally, I wouldn't condemn you
for being unaware of how well-defined the copyright issues are.
What you stated in your previous post ("it really doesn't hurt
anybody anyway") suggested that maybe you didn't care about the
consequences -- both moral and legal -- of copying somebody's
music without their permission. I can't help putting myself
in a composer's shoes and imagining what it would be like to
defend my work, scraping for every penny due in compensation
for my creative efforts. You get the idea.

Neil