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Wait - these are paid gigs? And you're bringing photocopies???? No way that's not a copyright violation.

Who said anything about photocopies?

He said he keeps the original and gives his fellow players "copies." Now, these might not be photocopies, true. There are other ways to make copies. One can write it out by hand, type it into a notation program, scan and digitize, etc. But they all share one feature: they reproduce an original that in most cases you do not have permission to reproduce.

Besides, we know from previous discussion that Greg has a somewhat ideosyncratic take on "fair use."

I took it to mean the other player's parts within the context.

Greg said the problem was that he was not getting the other parts back for his scores. E.g. the clarinet player keeps the clarinet part of, let's say, Sonata for Clarinet and Piano. So now Greg gives the clarinet player a copy instead. That sounds like a copy (photo or whatever) rather than the preprinted clarinet part that Greg purchased when he purchased the sonata, which would typically come in two separate booklets, with the clarinet part tucked into the piano part.

Ya, that is what I was seeing it as. And making a photocopy of music you purchased is OK.

No, I'm sorry, what is described here is very definitely not okay.

If you need two copies you must buy two copies.

There are exceptions. My church subscribes to St. James Press and copies are included as part of the price. So I can and do legally run more copies of bell music as needed.

But in general you can't make another copy just because it's more convenient, or you fear the original becoming lost or damaged.

This isn't a gray area. There is no disagreement on this among any of the musicians, professional or amateur, with whom I work regularly.

You are not reading what is written. He owns 2 copies - legal. He does not GIVE the copy to the other musician, but gives them a photocopy of the legal copy he owns, thus not losing his original. This is fine. As long as you own enough originals for everyone who is performing, there is not a problem.

I am reading what is written.

It IS a problem even if you own enough originals, which by the way is not claimed and I highly doubt he has.

If he has enough originals, why not use them? What does he gain by using photocopies?

Plainly he gains, or he wouldn't do it. In other words he has a sound business reason for needing two copies, but he has no intention of paying for two copies.

He's running a business performing. That business requires multiple copies of music, because human nature guarantees some copies won't come back or won't be available when needed. The law and ethics both require he pay the publisher for those copies.

Owning an original does not give you the right to reproduce it. Obviously you disagree, and I'd be curious why you've come to think that.

(I have occasionally been at a rehearsal where the director or contractor handed me a photocopy. Always it has been explained that the proper purchased copy has been ordered and will be received by performance time, and the photocopy will be destroyed. And yeah, we all know that's technically illegal, but it does happen. The reason I bring it up is that it illustrates that in the performing world we understand the rules forbid this.)

We discuss this quite a bit on a handbell forum. We usually have 10 or 12 ringers and everybody knows you buy a separate piece for each. And everybody would like to keep the originals in the file and hand out photocopies. Many bell ringers do not read much music, and circle their notes (often with a convention like left hand circle, right hand triangle, etc.) Once somebody has circled every F and G in every measure, it's pretty much ruined for the guy who rings C and D. But everybody knows the photocopy approach. while convenient, is illegal, and out of professional pride we don't do it. There are other copyright issues within handbell directors that are very contentious, but this isn't one of them.

If you own enough originals but said musician notoriously never returns originals after the concert, then he gives them a photocopy to use instead. He's paid for enough originals, but he doesn't wish to give them away. Makes perfect sense to me.





Again, you are making assumptions. And, by the way, there are legal grounds for using photocopies. Here is one resource I just found by searching.
http://www.schmittmusic.com/print-media/copyright-guide.php


So if the copies will be replaced by originals, it's legal to use a photocopy and then destroy it afterwards.

Exactly.

You know you're going to lose that copy.

You know you'll have to replace it.

And you've decided not to pay for it.

And that may seem perfectly reasonable, but you're getting paid to perform. The person who's earning his living composing has a different take on it. As does the law.

Does Greg's standard practice of handing out photocopies constitute an emergency?

Fair Use, Tim. One copy does not break the law. And I don't think Beethoven or Schumann care much about the money any more.

EDIT: And to be clear, I never use the original score myself when I perform with a singer. I always make a heavily doctored photocopy that can be put in a 3-ring binder, so that turning the page is 1- easier, 2- will lay perfectly flat, 3- can be easily, grossly marked up without ruining the original, and 4- won't knock the binder off the desk as easily as the score.

Lots of people do this, and I've been told it's perfectly legal so long as I'm not selling my own personal performance edition. And yes, those are paid gigs.

Ah, fair use. Section 107 of the copyright law, Title 17 of the U.S. Code:



Paragraph 1, whether the work is of commercial nature - oops, yours is

Paragraph 3, the amount of the portion used - oops, you're copying the whole part, not the 15% usually specified

One copy is not a violation IF it is not a complete copy.

Tim, a cello part cannot be construed as being the entire piano quartet, if that is the work under copyright. A single song from the Dichterliebe cannot be construed as the whole cycle, nor can the whole cycle be construed as the entirety of the copyrighted work, in this case, Schumann's collected songs volume X, a copyrighted work of 225 pages. All the songs in it are under a single copyright filing. 20 copied pages out of it doesn't even constitute 10% of the work.

As for my "commercial use" of my personal performance edition(s), there's no issue since I don't offer it for sale. That is the real concern of publishers in any case and what is meant by "commercial use". If I were offering even one copy of that performance edition for sale, I would have to get permission and pay a fee. If I were using facsimile extracts of that published edition in a reference book or an anthology, I'd have to get permission and pay a fee. But since it's not for sale, the use to which I put that single performance edition is too vague and too costly to argue about, and most likely falls very well within the terms of fair use.

Now performing rights of new music is another matter. Schumann is not a member of ASCAP or any of the European equivalents, so nobody has to worry about that; his performance rights lapsed with his death. When I perform Lee Hoiby or David Diamond (or Frances Poulenc in France even at this late date), the singer and I will pay ASCAP or the governing agency a fee. But they generally don't care what copy(s) I use in performance. ASCAP just wants its performance fees, because that's all they're entitled to collect.

I can't help but wonder what you do about the performance royalties.

Owning the sheet music does not give you permission to perform. Somebody (could be you directly, or the venue that hired you) has to pay royalties to the copyright holder.

And if the venue didn't do it, you owe.

Tim, go back and read my previous post.

Copyright law has nothing to do with performance rights. And in this country, that usually only concerns living composers or arrangers. I don't need to pay Robert Schumann or his publishers a thing, nor does anybody.

Do you know anything about this kind of law? I mean, seriously?

Wait, let me rephrase that: do you perform in your handbell choir any music that has not been composed or arranged by living composers?

"Owning the sheet music does not give you permission to perform. "

Tim, nobody pays anything to perform Schumann. Those rights lapsed with his death, if they ever existed at all (and they probably didn't at that time in German history).

My own paid gigs are mostly on brass, 99% on trombone. The other 1% would be a mix of keyboard, recorder, percussion.

As I'm not usually the contractor, I rely on "somebody" else to pay the royalties. I don't verify, but it does come up in conversation and I'm reasonably confident it gets done. My younger brother was a working jazz musician most of his life, and he's talked with me about royalty payments.

I think you're confusing residuals to performers with royalties owed to the copyright holder.

You don't actually owe ASCAP anything, whether the copyright holder is living or dead. ASCAP is just a convenient method of making the payments, sort of like a paypal account. ASCAP gets the money to the right place.

Bach doesn't get any royalties, and his music is all public domain. But, any published edition IS copyrighted, and if you play it on a gig I think you'll owe the copyright holder; you can't photocopy his work, nor rearrange it, working from a modern edition. Do you do any symphony gigs, per chance? They always play mostly music written by dead white guys, and they have to make royalty payments. Most of my orchestral gigs have been freebies, darn it, but again I've heard the permissions discussed.


Honestly, I've never had anyone bring up the living vs dead idea before. Most people think if they purchased legal sheet music they also purchased the performance rights, and that's simply not true.

That's because you perform works written or arranged mostly by living composers.

Performance rights, as such, did not come into existence as a legal practice until almost the very beginning of the 20th century. They vest in the artist when they create the work. But, like copy, trademark or patent rights, they become difficult to enforce without registering the work with the appropriate agency, and having connections and deep enough pockets to enforce them. Often, the composer will assign them to the publisher (if there is one) as they are better able to sustain a monopoly and enforce payment. That's what Puccini did in order to get paid in Berlin or New York for an opera he wrote in Milan. He assigned all his rights to his operas to Riccordi, and they controlled not only the rental of all the parts under license but also vigorously enforced whatever performance rights each country would offer.

Also consider that there are multiple editions of those works available in print now. It's impossible for a single publisher to claim any sole or exclusive performance rights to Brahms, for example. Those performance rights probably didn't exist when Brahms composed that music, and the publisher can't prove that you used only their music to prepare the performance. Over the Rainbow, on the other hand, is still published under license by only one publisher, the rights existed at the time of composition, and they were assigned and continue in force to this day.

You don't owe the publisher of Bach's music a thing if you play his original works. There were never any performance rights to those works when Bach was alive, and the publisher of newer editions has no rights to the performance, since the publisher did not compose those works and the rights were never assigned to them by the artist. Neither I nor any presenter has ever had to pay anything to any publisher for me to perform works written before 1920.

If you've been paying performance fees to publishers to perform Bach all these years, I'd ask for the money back. The only rights a publisher derives without a license is to the copies.

I asked my brother, who actively gigs and does some contracting.

He said that purchasing the sheet music does not include the performance rights, but the clubs he performs at all pay a flat fee to ASCAP if any copyright material is played. Other venues like concerts do playlists and pay per piece.

He also said he'd never heard of any distinction between living and dead composers. There's either a copyright or there's not.

You can play or arrange any ur-text Bach you want, but if you want to perform any modern published version, or rearrange any modern published version, you need permission from the copyright holder.

This isn't just my opinion, this is standard practice with all the musicians I work with.