As I understand it, the purpose of copyright is not so much for the protection of what is written, as it is for the protection of the money to made off copyrighted material. A piece of music, for example, is copyrighted, so that the composer and publisher is assured that they will get paid for composing and publishing that piece of music. There is even a system in place so that when music is performed and/or played, in a public setting. like concert or on the radio, compensation is made to the composer/publisher. Violations, such as copying music, instead of buying copies, are against the law. Obviously, someone who copies copyrighted material and passes it off as his own, much less tries to sell it to make money for himself, is also in violation of copyright law. The price list that Steinway published is not for sale. In fact, Steinway distributed it free of charge. No one is making any money off the price list, per se. The price list is information to be used by whomever, to buy products from Steinway. Because Steinway sent the price list to the general public, even if that general public was a select group of people, the public that received that price list is allowed to use it as they see fit. In other words, there is nothing Steinway can do to prevent a technician who received the price list to send it to his customers, or even to the newspaper if he wanted to. Again, if a customer wants to go to the trouble of finding out what we pay for Steinway parts, he'll do it. I don't think it's a secret, and none of us are violating any business practices, much less the law, by distributing the price list on this forum. Wim -----Original Message----- From: Israel Stein <custos3 at comcast.net> To: pianotech <pianotech at ptg.org> Cc: David Boyce <David at piano.plus.com> Sent: Sun, Mar 27, 2011 7:04 am Subject: Re: [pianotech] Steinway parts list On 11:59 AM, David Boyce wrote: I know. That is why I ended my post with More pertinent here, though, is the aspect of business confidentiality and business relationships. End of pedantic rant. I mentioned the broad principle of copyright law (not, surely, mere technicalities; the very fundamentals) as somewhat of an aside, since Del brought it up. He correctly pointed out a main principle of copyright that often seems not be be realised: that copyright is not something you DO; it's a right that IS. Kind regards, David Boyce. David, And here you are, of course, correct. In my former career as a commercial photographer I had lots of occasions to deal with the general public's ignorance of copyright law, where I had to send some stern warnings to clients who made unauthorized uses of my work. Fortunately for them, it never came to legal action, because under US copyright law the presumption is with the copyright holder - unless the user can produce a clear grant of license for the disputed use or show that "fair use" exceptions apply. And there are statutory fines and damages for each instance of violation - so it could get quite expensive... The problem in the US might be that US copyright law was not brought in line with international treaty standards until sometime in the 70's. Until then copyrights had to be registered, and any publication of a work without a registered copyright could throw the work into the public domain (with a very broad definition of what constitutes "publication"). Too many folks are under the impression that the pre-70's regulations are still in force. This is just not so. As David writs, copyright is automatic upon creation of a work, and is in force for at least the lifetime of the author - unless there is a specific grant of rights to others. Now, what constitutes a "work" is a very complex question, having to do with what is original from the author and what is not. Israel Stein -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20110327/26b88cd3/attachment.htm>
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