I don’t know about you, Wim, but I took my reference from a publication of the U.S. Copyright Office. As such it is in the Public Domain and can be freely copied and distributed by anyone for any reason. Same with publications such as The Wood Handbook (published by the Forest Products Lab. From time to time private publishers produce versions of The Wood Handbook under some name or other quite legally because it original is in the public domain. Copyright protection has nothing to do with whether you sell a copy of copyrighted material or freely give it away. On my classroom printouts, for example, I note that they are copyrighted. For a variety of reasons I don’t want them distributed to people who do not attend the actual class in which they were freely given away. It is a violation of copyright law for someone to copy one of those handouts and freely give it away. I know it is done from time to time but I hope the person doing it knows it is a reflection on their ethics as they do it. Same with articles I write whether they are published in the Journal or on my website where they could be freely read by anyone. Copyright has to do with distribution, not simply with selling or profiting. Why else do you think the Internet distributors of music—if you can call it that—were in trouble for making it possible for people to freely download and freely distribute copyrighted material from their websites? You can buy a copyrighted book and give it away. You cannot buy a copyrighted book, make copies of it and give those away. Well, you can, but you’ll be violating copyright law if you do. ddf Delwin D Fandrich Piano Design & Fabrication 6939 Foothill Court SW, Olympia, Washington 98512 USA Phone 360.515.0119 — Cell 360.388.6525 <mailto:del at fandrichpiano.com> del at fandrichpiano.com — <mailto:ddfandrich at gmail.com> ddfandrich at gmail.com From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of tnrwim at aol.com Sent: Monday, March 28, 2011 4:36 AM To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: Re: [pianotech] Steinway parts list As a follow up, the fact that both Del and I copied and pasted direct quotes from books written about copyright law, is not a violation of copyright laws, because all we are doing is sharing this information with others. We are not selling the information, nor are we claiming these statements to be ours. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20110328/5b4a06a5/attachment.htm>
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC