Klarinet Archive - Posting 000073.txt from 2010/07

From: Joseph Wakeling <joseph.wakeling@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Sheet music copyright
Date: Wed, 07 Jul 2010 10:55:27 -0400

On 07/07/2010 04:17 PM, Alexander Brash wrote:
> iTunes store seems to do ok despite the ability to download anything
> for free.

Which is an important indicator that people will still pay for stuff
even though it is freely copyable (I think all iTunes downloads are now
available DRM-free). One constraint (highlighted by the teenager whose
comments started this whole discussion here) is point of entry -- you
have to be an adult with a credit card (or have a friendly one close to
hand) in order to purchase from these markets.

An even better point of reference may be O'Reilly Media, who sell books
and e-books. At least some of their books are released under copyright
licences which mean you can put the entire book under the photocopier,
or redistribute the e-book copies without constraint. Nevertheless,
they are still successful in sales of both. For the hard copy it makes
sense -- a good hard copy of a valuable book is worth having; there are
similar books (actually not by O'Reilly in my case) which I've obtained
first for free as (legal) electronic copies, but for which I've later
purchased the paper book because it is in certain ways more convenient
to use.

For the e-books, you might wonder why -- but apart from the feelgood
aspect of contributing to the author and to a publisher who offers you
trust and generosity rather than suspicion, O'Reilly offer a number of
innovative services. For starters, their e-books automatically come as
a package, so if you read in PDF on your computer and then later you
want a version that is convenient to read on your iPhone, you can get
it. Further, as an e-book purchaser, you automatically receive
corrected versions of the text.

I can see that kind of 'value added' working with respect to electronic
copies of sheet music.
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