Klarinet Archive - Posting 000278.txt from 2010/06

From: Michelle Guajardo <michel470@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Sheet music copyright
Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2010 18:46:45 -0400

Whether the present law is or is not an appropriate solution in no way
justifies someone breaking it. Whether trivial in the mind of some, it is
still law, and law was made to follow.
And besides, with the law it's black in white. Either you support it, or you
don't. Either way, it is still asked of you to follow it.

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 5:19 PM, Joseph Wakeling <
joseph.wakeling@-----.net> wrote:

> On 06/30/2010 10:07 PM, Gary Van Cott wrote:
> > How is this any different than saying "I want a car but I can't afford
> > one, so I am going to steal one"?
> >
> > If you don't like the law you can work to have it changed (in congress
> > AND the courts). Personally I think they made a big mistake when they
> > extended the term of copyrights and should the occasion arise I will
> > make my opinion known.
>
> I'm not advocating anyone breaking the law -- I'm suggesting that the
> present law may not be the appropriate solution any more.
>
> The precise example you cite is a bit different from what we're
> discussing here. I can't take a car (a physical object) without taking
> it away from someone else. Similarly I can't take a printed piece of
> sheet music from your store without taking it away from you.
>
> On the other hand, if you have a PDF of some sheet music on your
> computer, I can create an exact copy of that PDF on my computer while
> leaving your copy intact; and the entire copying process takes a tiny
> fraction of time, CPU power and network bandwidth.
>
> People speak of such copying as "theft" but that's because they've
> become used to thinking of works of the intellect as "property". But it
> doesn't really apply, because one of the fundamental characteristics of
> property is that I can't have it without denying it to you. Where
> information on computer networks is concerned, that's patently (hah! pun
> not intended, but apt...) not the case.
>
> That's where Jason Robert Brown gets it wrong -- he talks about various
> examples of people taking _physical objects_ which they plainly can't
> keep hold of without denying them to someone else, and then he talks
> about computer-based copying in terms of _ease_. But it's not about
> ease per se -- it might be easy in some circumstances to steal a car,
> but I would still be taking it away from someone else. By contrast with
> electronic files, it's about the fact that what is easy is precise,
> verbatim copying, which lets the recipient have exactly the same thing
> as the giver, without the giver losing what they have in the process,
> and the total cost of the copying operation being as near as dammit to
> zero for both parties.
>
> What you _can_ reasonably talk about is that if I copy a composer's work
> in this way, I'm benefiting -- and that it makes sense that the composer
> should receive some benefit in return. But granting the composer a
> monopoly on copying, and enforcing a system where each copy must be paid
> for, is only _one_ way of doing that.
>
> If I could snap my fingers and duplicate a car -- duplicate, not take an
> existing car -- would it any longer be right to enforce a system where I
> have to pay per copy? Wouldn't the social benefit be to ensure that car
> designers and engineers get a fair salary but to freely allow such
> duplication to be sure that everyone who would benefit from having a car
> does so?
>
> Maybe cars are a bad example -- after all, there's some not-so-nice
> factors to consider here, like pollution, using scarce oil resources,
> etc. etc. But how about food? If we could duplicate food with the ease
> with which we can duplicate electronic files, would you insist that this
> possibility be constrained in order to protect the income of farmers?
> Or would you maintain instead that the right of people to eat should
> come first, and that the originators of food should be rewarded by a
> different mechanism than a price per every copy made?
>
> ... and works of art are food too -- food for the mind. If we consider
> that access to works of art at minimal (or preferably zero) direct cost
> per copy is a definite social good, and the present tools of electronic
> distribution make that at least in principle possible, then don't we
> have some kind of social duty to try and see if it's possible to find a
> way of rewarding creators that _doesn't_ disallow such copying?
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--
Michelle G.
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