I cannot show off my stuff
The reason is simple enough. I have been arranging pop songs - pretty much evergreens - for pop organ. I am obviously not allowed to post a single example of the stuff I have done due to copyright restrictions.
The thing is, that an arrangement of any pop song for electronic organ that tries to recreate the sound of the original CD entails days, if not even weeks, of hard work. Basically this work is wasted because I am the only person allowed to even look at the score after I have written it. Anybody else wanting to play the same hit on the same instrument has to repeat all the work I have done, because I am not allowed to post my results anywhere.
This is completely mad.
More often enough I have even purchased the mp3 from Amazon for 0,99€ and purchased some pretty rotten sheet music for piano and guitar from one of the download and print providers for two dollars something to serve as a starting point. In other words I have already paid twice for something I am actually playing myself.
This is even madder.
What is the use of setting up a MuseScore community if we are not allowed to share our results?
Comments
You *are* allowed to share your results - if they don't infringe on anyone else's rights. This is the nature of copyright law. You may put in hours of hard work on your arrangements, but you are still building on the equally hard work of others. So it is only fair to give thse others a say in what can be done with their work.
The fact that you have paid for the music is not really relevant. By posting your arrangement, you are making it that much less likely that *others* will buy the music - why should they if they can get it free from you?
So your other choices are to get permission from the original creators of the songs, or to foucs more on original compositions.
In reply to You *are* allowed to share by Marc Sabatella
...but I could not resist.
Marc's picture is a fair description of the current state of the matter: copyright laws exist and state certain things, each of us either complies with them or faces the consequences.
However, saying that the current state of the matter itself is fair is completely another tale! According to many (me included), copyright laws are unfair and several of the critics of the OP are gounded.
70 years after the death of the author(s) is pure madness for the very great majority of the works so 'protected' (and debatable even for the very few which could actually use this 'protection' or deserve it).
It is even debatable that such a thing as intellectual property does exist (as distinct from the "author right" (I don't know the term in English) which is the right to be recognized as the author of something and is by itself unconnected with any money consideration).
So, simono, under several respects I agree with you, as do many persons, movements and organisations which try to counter this state of affair, or at least to find alternatives to it, in several ways.
M.
P.S.: Of course, all of this is not the fault of musescore.com, which simply exists in a given context on which it has no control.
In reply to Not wanting to start a religion war... by Miwarre
Indeed, plenty about the specifics of copyright law are debatable. I was responding to overall idea that just because creates an arrangement of someone else's work (eg, creates a derivative work) that this should automatically give one full rights to that derivative work. Again, one can quibble the specifics, but the general concept is absolutely the foundation of why copyright law exists. It is not crazy at all that copyright holders retain an interest in derivative works - if this weren't true, copyright law would be worthless, as one could simple add one byte of information to an existing work and call it theirs.
And in any event, fiven this is a Musescoref prum not a copyright law forum, I am also responding to the possible implication that somehow Musescore is doing something wrong.
In reply to You *are* allowed to share by Marc Sabatella
The thing is, that as far as pop music goes, nobody can buy sheet music for electronic organ even if they wanted to. It practically does not exist, except for a couple of song collections, mostly “easy playing”. Although, the melody, the text, and the original sheet music for a specific song belong to one, two or perhaps three copyright holders, and the performances thereof belong to even further copyright holders, my arrangements are unique.
Of course I realize that each of the above mentioned have their rights. But I also realize what a waist of effort it is if dozens of people have to repeat the work I have done in order to have an arrangement that they can perform in the privacy of their own four walls.
It seems to me that somehow or other this “system” must be wrong.
I freely admit that I too do not have a viable legal solution to the problem. I was just letting off steam.
Up to now I have done four pop songs and it is infuriating not being able to share or swap the results with any other amateurs playing the same instrument and suffering from the same lack of suitable scores.
In reply to Others buying music by simono
Understood. You could of course actually contact the copyright holder and see what they say. And FWIW, there's a not-bad possible legal solution to this should one wish to push for changes. In the US at least, there is the concept of a "compulsory license" for recorded music. If you wish to record a version of someone else's song, you don't need permission - you just need to pay a fee set by law. The record industry has worked fine with this model for decades. But in the print industry, one needs explicit permission to publish an arrangement, and the copyright holder can negotiate whatever fee he wants. If there existed a similar "compulsory license" for print music that allowed you to have the right to distribute your arrangement without getting permission but by simply paying a pre-determined fee, things would be more equitable. Plenty of room for debate on how the logistics might work and what a reasonable fee might be, but it's a possible model at least.
In reply to Understood. You could of by Marc Sabatella
A concept similar to the "compulsory license" exists for recording and for public performances also here in Italy and, given the increasing uniformity of European Union laws, presumably in most of Europe.
Another, even broader, model is used with images and is based on the "different enough" concept. I do not know the details but friends professionally working in the field tell me that, if you take an image by someone else and modify it so that a given percentage of the pixels is demonstrably different, your rights supersede (some of?) the rights of the original image author.
So, even the current copyright legislation, even distorted and suffocating as it is, leaves some small windows open to individual creativity. It is a pity that our field -- scores meant to be read, either on paper or on screen -- is one of the most backward-minded and bases its practices and its laws on a business concept hundreds of years old.
@Marc: you stated, I stated, and we all agree, that MuseScore has no fault in all of this (if would be wonderful if MuseScore could be a force affecting the copyright laws, but it is not the case (yet? ;) ).
And, yes, this is the MuseScore forum, but in the sub-forum for scores created with MuseScore, some reminds, considerations and even rants now and then about what we can and cannot do with them once we created them does not seem to me entirely off topic.
M.
In reply to Understood. You could of by Marc Sabatella
The problem about talking to copyright holders is that they are usually large companies completely geared to commercial usage. Their legal departments simply do not support any type of mechanism for coping with private usage. To put it frankly, if they do not see that the bell on their cash register is going to tinkle they are not willing to waste their time talking to you.
(This is actually the second time that I have been fraught by copyright issues. The first time was about a translation of the famous “I have a dream” speech held by Martin Luther King jr. for posting in the Esperanto section of Wikipedia. I did contact the copyright holder, although it has never been clarified in the courts that he even has a copyright. Hopeless. The net result was that we could not post my translation in the public domain.
Note: This is off topic for a MuseScore forum and in reality the matter is little more complicated than I have summarized it here. Therefore please refrain from any discussion on the rather special "I have a dream" issue.)
In reply to Talking to copyright holders by simono
I agree this discussion has a place here.
I wouldn't entirely give up on the idea of contacting copyright holders. Even large corporations have actual people working for them, and once you find the right person to talk to, they may be more receptive than you think. Of course, you also risk drawing their attention to a site that may thus far have been under their radar, and since there are doubtless plenty of scores posted in violation, it could trigger a bunch of take-down notices.
It is interesting how the recording industry has changed with the times in some ways, which gives me hope that the print industry may as well. For instance, it used to be that in order to get a compulsory license for a recording, you had to fill out a bunch of paperwork and purchase a license for 1000 (or maybe 500) copies miminum - a model that made sense for large record comapnies or even for indepedents who were actually printing 1000 CD's and expecting to sell all of them. But didn't work so well for people doing smaller CD-R runs or selling individual downloads only - concepts which didn't exist 20 years ago. So the companies responsible for managing this licensing eventually adapted and made it easier for this kind of usage.
Whuch is to say, maybe musescore.com *could* have an impact, as the print industry may also realize the world is changing and they need to adapt too.
In reply to I agree this discussion has a by Marc Sabatella
I would just add that, knowing all of this, it's extremely important to add a proper license to all the work ones might publish or share publicly or even a small group, including arrangements. If one doesn't like the way copyright laws are working, one can choose a copyleft licence and explicitely states that it's ok to reproduce, remix etc..., possibly under condition the original (part of the) work he created. Of course it doesn't solve the pop song case of the OP, but if you write the next hit, think about it :)
...and everyone else here.
Please check out this humorous dissertation on copyright law and 'modern' composers - Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, John Cage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4niz8TfY794
One of the funniest quips concerns Cage's composition '4:33' - where the narrator states; "I'd play you an excerpt, but silence won't be in the public domain until 2062." LOL...
This one is very entertaining (and at times, existential).
Regards to all...