Copyright Fraud Article
Posted: Sun Jul 15, 2007 5:22 am
I found this article fairly interesting: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm? ... erDownload. It clears a lot of things up about copyright for me.
Interesting article. "Copyfraud" goes on a lot. Bogus notices abound. We've caught more than a few here at IMSLP. It's one of the reasons I've been so obsessive about plate numbers, publisher imprints, etc. - they all help in making some sort of (more or less) educated estimate as to when a given work was actually published.
Frankly, the most irksome of all are libraries and archives - supported with tax funds no less - who act as if their 150-year old printed score is protected by some mysterious set of never-ending 'rights', whose nature and ownership is never quite explained. Access to manuscripts is even worse. Build up vast collections with public funds and deny access to anyone but the fellow members of the priesthood! Too bad some ambitious attorney doesn't drag their sorry bureaucratic gatekeeper behinds into court.
And the first thing that came to my mind was "Edition Peters". I think IMSLP is doing something weird to my brain...