Klarinet Archive - Posting 000045.txt from 2010/07

From: Bill Hausmann <bhausmann1@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Sheet music copyright
Date: Mon, 05 Jul 2010 23:11:45 -0400

At 04:37 PM 7/5/2010, you wrote:
>I would explicitly reject the equivalence "copyright violation=theft".

I'm sure you would like to, but they ARE equivalent.

>I'm aware that legal opinion on this is varied, but it seems to me
>that this equivalence conflates three quite different things: on the
>one hand, the taking of a physical object, which inherently denies
>it to the person it is taken from; on the other hand, the taking of
>information, which doesn't result in the other person losing that
>information; on the third hand (I fear that in this respect law is
>rather like an Indian deity:-) the refusal to pay someone a fee that
>they are entitled to. I think it's wise to maintain the conceptual
>difference between those three things, even if the legal penalty (or
>even legal statutes) may wind up being the same.

The difference is small and irrelevant. Your third example is
equivalent to stealing the FEE, and that is the point. It is really
not the intellectual property you are stealing, but the FEE to which
the creator is entitled, which clearly DOES deny him property that is his.

> As for the ASCAP decision, the simple fact is that the world has
> changed (dramatically) since that decision was made. The balance
> of costs and benefits from copying of different kinds -- to the
> public and to creators of artistic works -- has shifted. One can
> agree with Oliver Wendell Holmes' decision that music needs to pay
> its creative artists without necessarily agreeing that the current
> model of payment is the appropriate one.

As I said before, if you can come up with a different system that
provides monetary compensation to the artist, please present it. In
the meantime, the current one is in force, the ease and reduced cost
of photocopying and file sharing notwithstanding.

Bill Hausmann

If you have to mic a saxophone, the rest of the band is TOO LOUD!

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