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<DIV><FONT face=Arial><FONT face="Times New Roman">Al, you say;</FONT>
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff>"Enough of this cr_p. We have worn this
subject to the ground. Get a life and let's go on to something
else!</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT><FONT face=Arial><FONT face="Times New Roman">Well, can
I say, gently and with respect, that personally I enjoy this discussion, which
is certainly at least tangentially related to our work. Al, you could just
ignore posts on this topic - don;t read them. I apprecaite however, that you may
be concerned about the bandwidth used up on</FONT> it.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>David, you make an interesting related point about the accuracy of any
information, and the vaue of citing a source - a standard procedure in
scholarship of course. You also say:</DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial><FONT color=#0000ff>"Also, since there are multiple
sources for this type of information how would you possibly determine a breach
of copyright had occurred (even if the information itself was copywrited—which
I’m inclined to believe from my legal resources that it is
not).</FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial><FONT color=#0000ff></FONT></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial><FONT face="Times New Roman">You are correct that the
information is not copyright. That is the case in both US and UK
law. The USA Copyright Act of 1976 can be read online at <A
href="http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html">http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html</A></FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial><FONT face="Times New Roman"></FONT></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial><FONT face="Times New Roman">Your point about multiple
sources is also significant. I could, tomorrow, put up a website with a listing
of all Steinway piano numbers. Would the publishers of Pierce sue me? They
might. Would they win? I do not think they could. I do not possess a copy
of Pierce. In all my life, I have held it in my hand for about five minutes and
that over twenty years ago. But I DO have The UK Piano Atlas and its two
supplements, published by Omicron Publishing, which lists all the Steinway (and
other makes) numbers. How would Pierce establish that I had copied the
Pierce Piano Atlas? They could not!</FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial><FONT face="Times New Roman">Israel, you
mention:</FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff>"Due to a court decision it is
currently not protected by copyright in the US. But in most of the rest of the
world it is. And since this list circulates internationally, this would likely
be a violation of British or Australian law - which might just have jurisdiction
due to the circulation of the list. And there is legislation pending in the US
to negate this court decision and restore copyright protection to the data to
collections such as Pierce (and telephone books and other such
compilations)"</FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff></FONT></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>US copyright law seems to strongly enshire the principle that *facts,
information, ideas* cannot be copyright. What seems to have "failed"
in the decision on the phonebook case, if indeed there was a failure, is the
protection of an *arrangerment* of information as a "work". </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>As it stands, The UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 is extremely
similar to US copyright law and would not proect piano numbers - only the
typographical arrangement of them on a page in a particular way. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>From time to time, it is necessary to amend existing laws or make new ones,
as society and technology move on. Before the 1988 Act in the UK, for example,
the previous law was from 1956 - long before ordinary households had access to
photocopiers, cassette recorders, etc. The 1988 act was itself updated by
a Statutary Instrument in 1995, which extended the duration of copyright to come
into line with European legislation. Although there have been Regulations
produced relating to electronic dissemination, it is quite possible that brand
new legislation is needed in all countries to take into account the revolution
of the internet in the last decade.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>It is, of course, the role of Judges to *interpret* the law and to apply it
to each case in hand. From time to time courts will arrive at a decision
that seems to fly in the face of commonsense, and is then pranded a "perverse"
decision.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>A prime - and music-related - example of what's been called a perverse
copyright decision, is the Hyperion v. Sawkins case. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> You can read about it here: <A
href="http://blogs.magnatune.com/buckman/2005/05/hyperion_record.html">http://blogs.magnatune.com/buckman/2005/05/hyperion_record.html</A>
</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Essentially,
Hyperion wanted to make a CD of the music of 18th Centruy French composer
Lalande. They hired a musicologist called Dr Sawkins to consult the
original handwritten scores and prepare a modern performing edition of Lalande's
music. Sawkins was to add no music of his own, merely to put Lalande's
music together in a prepared edition. Sawkins subsequently
claimed that even though he had produced no new music, he had created an
"original work" in terms of the 1988 Copyright Act. He won on appeal - a
decision with huge potential consequences for the recording
industry.</FONT> </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The result was a huge outpouring of support for Hyperion from many of the
Great and Good in the music world. I don't know if the blog about it is still
online, but it was full of Big Names. Many donated funds to pay Hyperion's
costs.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I would like here to "'plug" Hyperion, because my own interaction with them
was so positive. I emailed them to ask permission to use an article by a former
employee in a set of copyright notes I was preparing for students. Within two
hours I had a cordial reply from Mr Perry himself, the founder of the company,
giving permission.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Buy Hyperion CDs folks!</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Best regards,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>David.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT><FONT color=#0000ff></FONT> </DIV>
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