Klarinet Archive - Posting 000023.txt from 2010/07

From: Joseph Wakeling <joseph.wakeling@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Sheet music copyright
Date: Fri, 02 Jul 2010 13:41:27 -0400

Bill Hausmann wrote:
> As you point out, a revenue stream WAS created, largely as a result
> of their OWN performances. My point stands. Making a living is
> critical to the creation process, today as always, even though the
> details may have changed. Remove that motivation and creation will
> be possible ONLY by those who are independently wealthy and can
> afford to do it for purely artistic reasons. Mozart and Beethoven
> and Shakespeare would most emphatically NOT have been among that
> group! And the composers and writers of that day fought against
> those who would steal their intellectual property without the benefit
> of today's copyright laws, because it was literally taking the food
> from their mouths.

I never denied (actually, I affirmed) that making a living, or rather
_having_ a living (which includes those wealthy people) is clearly
necessary to the process of creativity.

The point of yours that I was responding to was, "Why would anyone
bother to produce ... if others could just freely copy without paying
for it?" The clear answer in the case of Mozart and Beethoven is that
they were paid principally _to produce_, to be the originators of new
work, by people who had an interest in new work existing.

Another common practice of the time -- and this covers Shakespeare too
-- is that people created new works in order to have novel work to
_perform_: they earned their money from performance, and they obtained
more performances from having novel works to display.

Does this mean that these reward systems for creative artists were the
right ones? Not necessarily. What it _does_ mean is that there are
means of providing financial stimulus for creativity that don't rely on
payment per copy distributed.

On 07/02/2010 03:36 PM, James Sclater wrote:
> Mr. Hausmann's point is well thought out. As a composer, a portion of my
> income is derived from the music I write. The ability to receive payment
> for what I do is one of the factors that keeps me composing. If my music
> is given away, I want to be the one that makes that decision. My music
> is NOT for someone else to give away. When someone other than my
> publisher takes my music and gives it away or sells it to someone else,
> it's called theft because it deprives me of what is rightfully mine. I
> just want to be adequately compensated for my efforts. We all have to
> make a living.

The question is not whether you should receive income from what you do
-- the question is how that income should be generated. :-)

I appreciate your desire for control over how your work is used, but
it's worth examining in detail what is meant by "rightfully mine".
There's a lovely quote I read recently from the late 18th century, which
unfortunately I can't find again, that goes roughly like this: it talks
of ideas as being property which the holder may exploit for their
exclusive benefit, _until they choose to share them with others_.

What I loved about it was how it struck a beautiful balance between on
the one hand recognizing that the natural state of creations of the mind
is private -- they come from one head -- but that they are "rightfully
yours" only while they remain inside your head: the moment they are
shared with others, they become public.

That's why copyright, for example, is not a "right" in the same sense as
life, liberty and so on -- things that you have until someone takes them
away from you. It's a privilege that the law chooses to grant, for the
purposes of public benefit. You are _granted_ a legal right to control
over the copying of your work, because it's supposed that the public's
loss in this respect -- loss of the benefits it could gain from copying
-- are outweighed by the benefits it will receive from your likely extra
productivity.

With the present changes in copying technology it's reasonable, even
necessary, to revisit that compromise -- to ask if the benefits the
public is giving up in terms of rights to copy and share are now too
great compared to the benefits they receive in terms of your increased
creativity. After all, not so long ago individual members of the public
largely couldn't make use of the rights they were giving up: to copy
texts, music and so on effectively involved a scale of effort and
technology only available to corporate entities.

Now, on the other hand, every individual has the opportunity to make
perfect, verbatim copies of electronic media, which are likewise
incredibly easy to modify and exchange. One has to pose the question of
whether the collective benefits of every single individual being able to
copy, share and modify creative works are not too great to be given up.

The issue being, not that you don't deserve or need an income from your
work, but that there needs to be a different model for generating it
that doesn't negatively impact this potential for mass individual
creativity and sharing.

Bear in mind, too, that there is an extra factor in electronic exchange
that drastically affects your _own_ interest in whether it's better to
restrict or permit copying: the _range_ of people that can be accessed.
In an electronic age you can achieve a remarkable amount of publicity
(and hence income opportunities) with very little effort, through the
efforts of individuals in freely passing on your creations. It is
genuinely not clear that permitting non-commercial copying by private
individuals will have a long-term negative impact on the creative process.

See e.g.: http://www.btlj.org/data/articles/19_02_04.pdf
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