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From: ark@alice.UucP (Andrew Koenig)
Newsgroups: net.religion,net.legal
Subject: Re: query on music copyright
Message-ID: <4852@alice.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 21-Jan-86 10:58:11 EST
Article-I.D.: alice.4852
Posted: Tue Jan 21 10:58:11 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 23-Jan-86 08:31:01 EST
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Organization: Bell Labs, Murray Hill
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Xref: watmath net.religion:8965 net.legal:2760

> Relyzing that almost all of sheet music; the type of music that church
> choirs and choruses use; is marked all over with copyright notices and
> dire warnings of consequences of unauthorized copying, I have the 
> following question. I have sung in many church choirs and community 
> choruses in several parts of the country and many of them still continue
> to use xeroxed copies of sheet music passed out to the members. As a singer,
> I occasionally get music that is blatently marked 'Copying Prohibited' all
> over it and yet is a xeroxed copy. The question is is can I as a choir member
> get into trouble or the group as a whole or what? And why is it still going
> on despite the warnings? Obviously it seems that whatever enforcement there
> is must be a joke otherwise I would think that these varous churches and 
> choruses would not be doing it. If I were a composer, I frandkly would be
> very dissapointed.

I'm not a lawyer, and I may well be mistaken about this, but my understanding
is that the activity that is prohibited is MAKING the copy.  And no, it
isn't a joke.  I remember the following situation described in
an article in Computing Reviews:

A choir director bought copies of a book of hymns for each member of
his chorus.  However, he found that the arrangements of some of the
hymns did not suit his particular situation, so he re-arranged them.

He felt his arrangements were well done, so he wrote a letter to the
publisher of the book offering to give them his arrangements in case
they wanted to publish them in a future edition of the book.  They
sued him for copyright violations and won.

The point is that an arrangement is a copy under the law.  Moreover,
if a publisher finds out about a violation, they're on the spot.  If
they don't prosecute, that fact can be used in the defense of some later
case:  "They are prosecuting me but they didn't prosecute those other
guys.  They don't really care about their legal rights; they're just
harrassing me!"

So: can you as a choir member get into trouble?  Maybe; I don't know.
Can the group as a whole get into trouble?  Absolutely.  Why is it
still going on?  Probably because the publisher hasn't found out.
Just for fun, you might try phoning the publisher and describing the
situation without identifying yourself.  See what the publisher says...