Klarinet Archive - Posting 000137.txt from 2010/07

From: Joseph Wakeling <joseph.wakeling@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Sheet music copyright
Date: Thu, 08 Jul 2010 15:02:30 -0400

On 07/08/2010 07:50 PM, charette@-----.org wrote:
> Oh really? Money works wonders in politics regardless of the source

I wasn't even on the list in 1998, and knew bugger all about any of
these issues -- if anything, I was probably on the other side ... :-(

> the copyright laws of the US now very closely align with Berne & WIPO. I
> would rather they didn't align so well ... The old way of registering &
> extending made more sense "for the common good' in my estimation, and
> now that record keeping is generally easier, finding works that have not
> been renewed would be significantly easier.

I'm not sure about this -- I think I would rather that copyright applies
without registration; I know that I for one was encouraged to make
things public by the knowledge that merely putting a declaration of
"Copyright Joe Wakeling [year]" was enough, and that I didn't have to
jump through bureaucratic hoops. There is a public good in making it
_easy_ for people to disclose their creations.

To my mind, the requirement of registration puts in place to big an
asymmetry between organizations (with careful resources to track such
things) and individuals (who don't). Example: I'd hate it if small
free/open source software projects had their work swallowed up by
proprietary companies simply because they hadn't registered their copyright.

I see the problems of automatic copyright, but I'd rather solve them in
a different way.

> But the world's publishers, authors, authors' estates, government
> authorities, etc. disagree with me, and few interested parties on the
> other side put their letter writing abilities, media connections, or
> money into opposing this bloc. They'd rather complain after the fact.

"Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got 'til
it's gone ..."

Copyright, of course, but fair use in this example I rather hope.

> Stallman is to copyright as Kevorkian is to right-to-die. Both are the
> wrong people to champion complex (and difficult) ideas.

What strikes me about Stallman is the precision of his analysis; he
makes an excellent case for his ideas. It seems to be his personality
and his dedication to moral ideals that scare away a lot of people.
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