This thread: Copyright on old works of art? - Factual Questions - Straight Dope Message Board reminded me of a couple of questions I have had. The first is quite simple. Once upon a time, a lawyer came on CBC and mentioned in passing that the usual announcement you hear on sports broadcasts: The accounts and descriptions of this game are the property of [name of league] and may not be reproduced without permission of [whomever], were totally baseless in law. Accounts of current events, he claimed, could not be copyrighted. There were a couple of exceptions. Canned interviews or analyses could be subject to copyright was the first and the second was if a game was fixed (e.g. pro wrestling). Is that correct?
The second question concerns sheet music of classical music. I got this from the music librarian of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. He was describing how, if the orchestra wanted to play, say Beethoven’s Fifth, they had to rent from a music publisher 100 copies of the score. Or rather 15 or so of the first violin score, 15 of the second violin score, 10 viola parts, etc. The concertmaster then wrote in pencil the bowing instructions on the first violins and the section leaders of the other instruments added their own comments and all the musicians copied what the leader had done, always in pencil. After the concert all these annotations had to be erased before the music was returned to the publisher. The cost was considerable. I asked why, since the work was obviously out of copyright, they couldn’t just rent one copy and photocopy it. “Oh, no, while it is out of copyright, the publisher has added information and that is copyright.” It seems to me that it was the section leaders who had added information; the publisher has just made a copy of a score originally due to Beethoven.
Anyway, this was maybe ten years ago. Nowadays you could simply get one copy of a part, play it on a recording piano (you can play any part on a piano), mark it any way you like and make as many copies of that as needed. Is there any reason, either legally or musically, that this wouldn’t work? Even at the time, I suggested something of the sort to the librarian, but he wasn’t buying it. Dopers need to know.
In the US, the game is certainly a current event, but what is broadcast is copyrighted. In theory, you can go out and video it yourself; I actually did and broadcast it back in my cable TV days when I had a press pass to the ALCS in 1977). It’s possible that the venue prohibits videotaping, though, and can stop you from doing it and kick you out.
But the account and description are copyrightable.
The reason you can’t photocopy the score that you rented is probably not copyright, but more likely the rental agreement. You get the score for X amount, but there will be an addition fee (far more than X) if copies are made. The music publishers probably have the orchestras over a barrel – as you point out, you need scores for all the instruments, and multiples of each. The cost of buying one is thus extensive (if anyone actually publishes them – it’s expensive to print, too) and quite a bit for something you might play every five years or so, so it’s simpler to just rent.
Wouldn’t it be a simple matter to borrow a copy from a library, then, and make copies off of that? If it’s truly that expensive to rent so many copies, it might be worth it to travel to a university to use their rare-book room to copy off a 19th century copy. Last I checked, libraries typically do not restrict you from copying public domain materials in their possession, they only really care whether or not your act of copying the stuff on their shelves violates copyright, and in reality they aren’t looking over your shoulder or anything and people probably get away with a lot.
I’ve wondered if it’s the specific notation system used or something. I was leafing through a church hymnal a while back. Typically, hymnals will indicate sources and years for lyrics and music, e.g. “Text: Martin Luther, 1540, translated by Rory B. Bellows, 1853, Music: John Robinson, 1765”. Often times, the name of the book that the material was originally published in is also given. E.g. “Hugh Jass, Compendium of Church Music for Evangelical Churches, Second Edition, 1832”. Now, if I went back to the original source for the music, would I expect to see a verbatim copy of the notes on the page exactly as printed in the same notation (or at least a slavish 1-1 equivalency), or would I see some archaic 18th century scribblings that I would have to find someone with an MFA in Music to figure out and correctly interpret according to modern music standards? Maybe that’s what’s copyrighted? I’ve thought about doing that - looking at the source, but I am also not really that good at reading music so I might not really be able to understand equivalencies.
The facts of a sporting event cannot be the subject of copyright in the US. A person in the stands may text his colleague at the radio station after every pitch or play to relay what just happened. The description given by the announcers of a game authorized by Major League Whatever are expression, which certainly can be copyrighted.
In the old days of radio, young Ronald Reagan (among others) had a talent for reading the brief descriptions being telegraphed to them of the plays taking place in a baseball game, and adding enough drama, sound effects, and color to make it sound like they were in the ballpark.
New editions of older classical works can actually be very different (well, to the trained eye, anyway) from their 19th century predecessors. Conductors can be very particular about which of the sometimes many competing editions to use, since they might feature different phrasing, articulation or just have plain misprints fixed. There is a lot of research going into so-called “Urtext” editions, and the publishers of those editions want to and need to get paid.
But most libraries would probably only have a full conductor’s score, not the scores for the individual instruments. While you could get a conductor’s score fairly easily that way, you’d have to recopy the individual scores. Using just the conductor’s score could be complicated: what if a musician read the wrong line?
Their account and description is copyright able. You can make your own. Team names are trademarked, but scores are news. That is how many sports reporting places get around copyright. They only show the city name next to the score. When i took a tour of Heinz, they explained that there are no broadcasts of the game with sound in the press box, so the writers could not be accused of copying somebody else’s words.
Sheet music is the same as a novel. The story itself can have the copyright expire. But, a publisher can copyright their version of it. You can get around this by listening to the music and writing it out by hand. I believe weird al and Dave lettermans band does this.
The equivalent today is ESPN.com’s Gamecast. Someone is just transcribing what is happening on the field, and then embellishing it with pretty pictures. Gamecast is offered for free.
This is completely irrelevant in this context. Trademark is a consumer protection law. It exists to prevent some kinds of fraud. It is not really similar to copyright law. Using other company’s trade names in novels and so on is not against the law; what’s against the law is using other company’s trade names in a way that would confuse customers into buying your product instead of theirs.
Wasn’t there some provision in a court decision that a slavish copy did not create copyright? Just how much alteration does the average publisher put on a Beethoven symphony that they can claim sufficient changes to qualify as an original derivative work?
I suspect that (a) it’s just that nobody wants to take the case to court; the publishers don’t want to be told they made too little change, and the orchestra barely makes anything on the performances, let alone enough to cover lawyer fees… and (b) I bet nowadays printing tech is probably so much more advanced that the pencil markup and erasing no longer applies. They probably only have to return the sheets to ensure that they are not kept for future use.
This is the kind of thing that you can’t really know until you go to court, which means it remains unknown in a lot of questionable cases. A photocopy is never going to create a new copyright; a drawing is always going to create a new copyright; in between there is a vast grey area which defies quick decisions and can only be mapped out slowly, court case by court case.
Interesting. Our church comes up against this when they want music, either in sheet or as a recording. In general music over 70 years old is out of copyright, but new arrangements get released all the time so it is hard to know when some sheet music you have was first produced.
As a church we don’t want to even bend the law a little, so we don’t copy anything. There can still be problems though - at a recent wedding, the beautifully printed order of service included the words of some songs. I suspect that this was probably a breach, but one wouldn’t want to spoil the day.
This was less than 10 years ago (has printing changed that much) and one of the things the librarian complained about was that the scores had been marked and erased so often that they could be nearly unusable (for further markup). I still don’t see why someone couldn’t play the pieces on a recording piano, mark it up, and then store it on a thumb drive and print it when needed. They could even copyright the marked up version.
Setting music (properly) is hard. It’s not just a matter of typing the individual notes on a keyboard, like you would with a normal text, but then adding dynamics, exact note durations (there are always going to be misunderstandings with even the most skilled keyboard player), articulation, phrasing, layout, cue notes, etc…
What you pay for isn’t necessarily the correct notes, but someone who puts them in a useful format for a musician to play out of. You could buy or copy an old edition, but like I said, most self-respecting musicians and conductors would be very reluctant to use those.
Modern scores look a bit different from originals. Some conventions of music notations have changed (actually, a LOT of them have, continuously, over the centuries) and printing is easier on the eye than hand-written scores.
What the publisher is publishing is not a photocopy of an original, not by a long shot.
I bet it’s a lot more expensive to hire someone to produce a modern score from a historic one than it is to rent it. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be much of a business model for renting out scores.