[Trombone-l] Tommy Pederson & Copyright reform

[George Carr]

This issue comes up a lot in the book-publishing industry; there are
thousands, maybe millions, of "orphan" books whose authors &
publishers (or their "successors in interest," like spouses, heirs,
and such) can't be readily identified. About a decade ago, after
Google digitized several major college libraries in their entirety,
and couldn't figure out how to pay royalties for such books, they
proposed a system for putting royalties & other fees for such works in
trust until the rights-holders could be sorted out, as part of a court
settlement. But the settlement fell through, and the lawsuit was
dismissed, without really addressing how orphan books might be handled
better. Music publishers are even less organized (both individually
and as an industry), and rights to orphan music usually don't get
investigated at all, unless there's a record label involved. (For
instance, Bill Holman used to tell the story of how Buddy Rich proudly
refused to pay for Bill's big band arrangements, believing that the
prestige of writing for him was payment enough, but Rich's record
label ended up paying Holman secretly.)

So it's still correct that the current state of the law prohibits
reproduction of copyrighted works, unless one of the fair use
exceptions applies: teaching, satire, etc. There's no "bright line" at
10% of the work; I've seen copyright infringement liability arise from
'borrowing' a single third clarinet part to a concert band score,
which is way less than 10% of the pages involved.

But it's also true that infringers don't usually get hassled when the
rights-holder has let the work go out of print, and that infringers
who make efforts to identify and pay the rightsholder, but can't find
them, rarely face any legal consequences. I actually AM a lawyer, with
copyright litigation experience, so I can answer more specific
questions off-list.

George Carr
216-245-5380

On Sun, Feb 9, 2020 at 10:21 PM Craig Parmerlee via Trombone-l
<trombone-l at trombonelist.org> wrote:
>
> I believe the educational exception is limited to 10% of the work.  I
> don't believe there is any legal way to freely copy complete sheet music
> that has a copyright claim without explicit permission.
>
> As a practical matter, I don't ever hand out originals I have
> purchased.  I keep the originals on file.  There have been too many
> times that I have had to re-create folders.  And in many of those cases,
> the music simply wouldn't be available from a publisher at any price.
> And I do use copies of out-of-print music obtained from others, so I'm
> not trying to say I am holier than thou.  But we should be clear about
> the actual laws.
>
> Many people, myself included, believe that the "Disney Act" that
> protects everything back to 1929 is one of the most vile pieces of
> corporate-purchased legislation ever, but it is the law.  It is ironic
> that patents are (ostensibly) only good for 17 years while Disney has
> arranged for their rights to be basically forever.
>
>
>
> On 2/9/2020 9:58 PM, DAVID FETTER via Trombone-l wrote:
> > Yes, there is an exemption for partial use of a publication for educational purposes.
> >