Klarinet Archive - Posting 000914.txt from 1999/11

From: "Jim O'Briant" <jobriant@-----.com>
Subj: RE: [kl] Asking for Help from the list
Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 15:30:08 -0500

I wrote:

>>If I publish a new edition of -- say -- "The Widget" for unaccompanied
clarinet by Mozart, the music itself is in the public domain. But even if
I don't change a note or any other markings, my edition -- with my
engraving typeface, my choice of fonts for the title, my decisions on the
number of measures on each staff, the number of staves on each page, the
spacing of individual notes and the location of page turns -- my edition is
still copyrightable.

Mark replied:

> Right. However, if I create my own, using the same fonts & typeface
(since I paid the owner for rights to use those, too!) as you did, but did
not photocopy yours (there would of course be some minor differences, but
if we both used, let's say, Finale's defaults, they'd be pretty darn
close), what happens? We both have virtually the same product - how would
a copyright be defended?

> It used to be that creating and correcting plates incurred a significant
financial and artistic investment, but electronically created scores are
relatively easy to produce, and two people conceiveably could come up with
exact or almost exact products.

But a COPY is still a COPY, whether photocopied, handwritten or done on a
computer. And even if you copy my arrangement and make changes, my
arrangement is still copyrighted and you are legally required to obtain my
permission first. Until my copyright expires, I have the right to grant or
deny that permission, and if I grant it to require any royalty payment I
want as a condition of permission. If you want to legally copy a published
arrangement without getting permission, that arrangement must be in the
Public Domain.

Mark, we could play this "what if I did this" game from now till kingdom
come without any worthwhile result. Yes, everything you said there is
true. Yes, you and I, using the same software, could come up with two
virtually identical arrangements.

But that isn't the point. The point is that to COPY someone else's
copyrighted arrangement without permission is ILLEGAL. If you do it, will
you get away with it? Perhaps. Does that make it all right? Not in any
system of ethics that I live by.

I recently published a trombone choir arrangement of a piece by
Shostakovich. The arranger wrote his arrangement in 1993, before Russia
became a signatory to the Berne Convention. Thus, his arrangement was
written legally at the time because Americans were not legally bound to
honor Russian (or Soviet) copyrights. When Russia signed the copyright
treaty in 1995, his arrangement became illegal. It took me more than 4
years to get the required permissions, but I got them and then published
the arrangement this fall.

Jim O'Briant
Bayside Music Press
Gilroy, CA

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