Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!apple!arc!steve From: steve@arc.UUCP (Steve Savitzky) Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: Re: New Communicational Morality Message-ID: <191@arc.UUCP> Date: 14 Apr 89 21:05:15 GMT References: <754@infovax.lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de> <13060@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> Organization: Advansoft Research Corp, Santa Clara, CA Lines: 39 In-reply-to: mjm@eleazar.dartmouth.edu's message of 14 Apr 89 18:42:43 GMT In article <13060@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> mjm@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Michael McClemen) writes: I get rather annoyed whenever I hear someone say "oh, but we can't use that because it's copyrighted". I was once told that in the music industry, anyone has the right to re-record anyone elses' song, and the original author is entitled to an industry-standard payment, no more. In other words, once a song has been released for sale to the public, the author cannot restrict who will use *or even re-record* it. I may have been mislead, but even so it is a protocol I approve of. I certainly see no harm in considering such ideas, nor do I see the immanent demise of the software or of any other industry on their account. This is true in the US, or at least it has been in the past; our recent signing of the Berne Convention may change things. It's called a "compulsory license". Note, however, that such a license does NOT give one the right to *change* anything without the permission of the copyright holder (who is frequently a publisher rather than the original author). Another feature of the music industry that may be of interest is the "Small Performing Rights Organization" ("small" modifies "performing rights", not "organization"), of which the major examples are ASCAP and BMI. What these organizations do is monitor *broadcasts* to figure out how much your songs are getting played. They then bill all the broadcasters (and anyplace else that's performing music for the public, including nightclubs and the like), and distribute the resulting royalties to the publishers and authors on a per-play-per-song basis. (The usual split is 50-50 between the publisher and the songwriter). The corresponding concept in the software world would be billing BBS's and utilities like Compuserve. Some countries also have a surcharge on recording media (tapes), based on the idea that the purchaser is probably going to be using them to record copyrighted material. (There may be a way of avoiding the surcharge if you can prove you're recording original material.) Steve Savitzky #include apple.com!arc!steve May the Source be with you!