I’ll admit it. I’m completely biased when it comes to the world of music and copyright.
After all, the music publishing site Andrew Beard and I are designing focuses on the idea that copyright should benefit the creator of the work, not the publishing company that is trying to rake in the enormous profit for themselves. Our ideas are relatively simple:
1. The creator of a work should retain the copyright. No more petitioning a major publishing house to seek permission to arrange your own composition. Yes, a colleague of mine had to submit a written request to obtain permission to make a TTBB arrangement of his original SATB composition.
2. A composer should have the right to withdraw his or her work from a publisher. If the publishing company provides sloppy service, doesn’t market your music, takes two years to publish your piece, and makes late payments, why should you stay with them? We realize we’re taking a risk. We can’t possibly promote everyone’s music individually, but composers should have the right to control withdraw music if a publishing company simply doesn’t make the cut.
3. Music educators should have site licenses for any given piece. If Hal Leonard thinks I should only have six flute players in my middle school band, and I have eight, I am supposed to purchase two additional copies of the piece. I am not gaining any new intellectual property, I’ve paid for the score and parts already! Instead, I should pay a fixed price for the intellectual property, and make any additional copies on my own.
Now, I’m not one to break the rules. So if you’re a member of the MPA, and think that I’m consciously breaking copyright law, I am not. But I whole-heartedly support publishing companies that play by the same rules that we do at Insightful Music.
As we try to go about reforming copyright and publisher practices, we still have the ethical responsibility to play by the rules. That’s why I’m frustrated with the number of technologically literate people who continue to use other people’s ideas and images without proper attribution. You’ll notice that at MusicEdForAll, we don’t use a lot of fancy graphics to illustrate our points. Most amateur bloggers (for education or otherwise) seem to feel protected by the “fair use” clause regarding borrowed images. Some of my instructors in online classes seem to think providing a basic attribution i.e. “borrowed from Bob’s Flickr account” constitutes appropriate use of copyrighted materials. If we had a pretty sweet payroll and could shell out a hundred dollars a month, we’d have nice, glittery graphics all of the time. While Google Images (advanced search) allows you to search for public domain images, truth be told, there aren’t many free, royalty-free image databases available.
If you’re like me and have some unique ideas about copyright, you may find the website QuestionCopyright.org an extremely interesting collection of articles and philosophies.
Quick reference for many online copyright issues
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
“I am not gaining any new intellectual property, I’ve paid for the score and parts already! Instead, I should pay a fixed price for the intellectual property, and make any additional copies on my own
Doesn’t your making two more copies deprive the composer of royalties on 2 copies – small though it may be?
That’s a good point. I should specify that composers should be paid a higher royalty in the first place. Most make about 5%, so on a $2.50 copy, they’re making $.125. I would pay a higher royalty to composers in the first place- the only ones who are truly making money on copies are the publishers.
Hi Dan – I have to say, I myself like the idea of site licenses for music; making it simpler would make it less likely that people would cheat. In reality, it’s simply pitiful how little the composers actually get for their work – the publishers could not exist without the composers, but the converse is not true. My conscience forever whispers to me about how wrong it is that drug company salesmen make more than drug company chemists do, and this is another example along those lines. In the case of music, the web has created endless possibilities for direct distribution, so maybe, just maybe, things will come around in time for the next generation of composers and authors.
Pauline
Pauline,
I couldn’t agree more. In college, I was fortunate enough to meet several band and choral composers- all of whom mentioned how frustrating the publishing world can be. Composers receive small royalties, may not receive payments for two years, lose all rights to the piece, etc. I really hope my publishing company, InsightfulMusic (and others like it) can help revolutionize the publishing system, or at least be a wake up call for the major publishers who are stuck in a different century.
Dan