[overflow] Re: Copyrights (by way of Tom Smith got his wish...)

[mbottorff@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Michelle & Boyd Bottorff)]

> 
> I suspect that your feeling that it's impolite to hand songs around
> or change them indicates you're not thinking of filk as part of
> folksong but rather as part of commercial pop music, in which even
> an arrangement can be copyrighted.  What are your feelings on recipes,
> and does it make a different if you got them out of a cookbook
> or from an elderly relative?  Do you have a right to pass them on
> without checking with the author?  To change the ingredients?

Hmm, no when you put it that way, I realize I don't mind people handing
them around or changing the words, I mind them PUBLISHING my version, or
their changed version *without asking*.  I wouldn't care if they sung it
howsoever they wanted, so long as no one was recording it, or at least,
they were recording it only for their own use...

Okay, I've got it.  Finances aside, I want the right to perminant public
record.  The more work I put into something, the greater value I place
on that right.  (And yes, I'd proably feel the same way about recipees,
although I don't cook much, and I've never had the urge to copy a
recipee out and pass it along to anyone, so this wasn't a good example
in my case.  My mother-in-law is in possession of someone else's "secret
family recipee" which she had to promise not to give out before she was
given it --and she got it as repayment for a great personal favor.)

If someone else wanted to make a public perminant record, I would likely
say "yes", but I would like to be asked, I'd like to be able to look
over the ms. and make sure no blatant errors have crept in, I'd like to
know that nobody is using my song for "evil purposes"...  That sort of
thing. 

The varying legnth copyrights for longer vs shorter works actually makes
a lot of sense to me, although poetry ought to count as longer than the
same amount of prose, and so forth.

I don't see any point in copyright after someone is dead, except on a
financial, "support his dependants" sort of a thing.  I agree with you
that it isn't fair to not be able to use something just because you
can't ask, and if the author is dead, then you REALLY can't ask.

(Heh, I just had the most amusing vision of a fantasy world where
mediums did a flourishing business as a copyrights clearing house.)

If you know the author would refuse a particular usage for some reason
then I think you have a moral obligation to not use it, but that would
be unlegislatable. 


BUT just because people didn't use to have a concept of "copyright"
doesn't mean that such a thing isn't "natural."  Property rights are
considered pretty natural nowadays, and yet, according to what I
understand many primitive societies had no real concept of personal
property.  

If I built a chair, I would have "natural" rights over who got to use
that chair.
By the time I have polished a lyric, contructed a tune, and made a
musical arrangement for a tune, I have probably spent a similar amount
of time to the amount of time it takes to make a chair.  (And I could
make an 11 piece dining set in the time it takes me to write a novel.)
Yes, I think I deserve some rights over who gets to use the tune.  

In a society where there is no copyright the only way I would have to
maintain that control was to never let my song be heard.  But then, the
only way I could maintain my right to the chair in a society with no
personal property laws, would be to hold on to that chair for the rest
of my life.


Michelle Bottorff
Lady Lavender

-- 
Family webpage:  http://home.sprintmail.com/~mbottorff/index.html
Lady Lavender's Filksongs: http://www.freemars.org/lavender/index.html
25r:2a:1p