I have just uploaded a scan of the first page of Bernstein's Chichester Psalms. I believe this satisfies fair use in illustrating the article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chichester_Psalms and I am confident it does not interfere in any way with the publisher's ability to profit from their intellectual property. This particular scan includes the copyright statement, which is a bonus.
Acceptable? I would be very surprised if not.
Next up: Duruflé Requiem. Problem: not much happens on the first page, the obvious target for a scan here is the first page of Movement II, the Kyrie. This does not have the copyright statement, although of course I put it in the image description.
Acceptable in illustrating an article on the Duruflé Requiem? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requiem_%28Durufl%C3%A9%29 Probably OK, I would say. Yes?
OK, I have a pretty extensive library of scores, and most of them I can find a single page, usually the first, which illustrates the work well and does not in any way interfere with the copyright owner's ability to profit. But there are some hard cases.
* Works where the work is listed in a section in the article on the composer. In order not to overwhelm the article I would be inclined to scan a single system, but that does not fundamentally change matters; it would not have the copyright on the scan, but it would be on the description page, the question is, would fair use justly apply to use in illustrating a discussion of the work in an article on a wider topic?
* Works where there are multiple editions, for example Copland's Old American Songs. Here I have one of a number of different versions, and available in different keys. Simple Gifts, an iconic melody (it's the melody in Appalachian Spring), probably the best known of all the American songs he collected. Melody by Trad, filtered through Copland, filtered again by the editors of my edition. Valid?
Clearly in the case of a short work like windmills of your mind (theme from the original Thomas Crown Affair, keep up at the back there) a full page is too much for fair use, a single system or two systems is the most one could justify. Would the same apply to Summertime? It's a short work, but part of a whole opera.
I have few reservations about the Messiah, the Watkins Shaw edition is now pretty much ubiquitous and Novello publish both that and Prout anyway. Beethoven Missa Solemnis,no problem, only one edition I know of.
Mozart Requiem - a problem. The Novello edition, completed by Sussmayr, is far and away the most widely used in the UK, but there is a newish critical edition completed by Robert D. Levin which includes an amen fugue taken from sketches by Mozart. Would a single system or two systems from that be acceptable in discussing that critical edition in the article on the Mozart requiem?
What of scores from ChoralWiki? That is public domain, I guess we can borrow at will? Or should we restrict ourselves to the same level of caution? Note that some of the stuff on ChoralWiki is actually copyright, it's externally hosted, so I would have to watch that of course. Most of them are in PDF format.
Finally, does anyone have a good, cheap or free converter from jpeg / tiff to a more efficient format?
Thanks,
Guy (JzG)
On 30/03/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
Finally, does anyone have a good, cheap or free converter from jpeg / tiff to a more efficient format?
The GIMP opens and saves most image formats on Windows, Mac and Linux. It's less than fabulous in usability, but very powerful.
IrfanView for Windows is freeware a lot of people like. I haven't used it in years - it seemed to do the job, but I knew my way around the GIMP so went back to that.
For the questions on fair use of the scans: do the scans add something to the article that you really just can't get any other way? With album and book covers, it's *the* cover for the album. Is a score regarded that way?
- d.
On Fri, 30 Mar 2007 22:52:06 +0100, "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
For the questions on fair use of the scans: do the scans add something to the article that you really just can't get any other way? With album and book covers, it's *the* cover for the album. Is a score regarded that way?
It's functionally equivalent to a short sound clip, without the additional burden of being one person's interpretation of the work. Or you might liken it to a photograph of an individual. It is a picture of the work described.
Does it add to the article in a unique and meaningful way? I'd argue very strongly yes. If you read music, the excerpt tells you an enormous amount about the work. The out-of-copyright ones, which would mainly apply to Victorian music hall performers, are very unlikely to be rejected from those articles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requiem_%28Durufl%C3%A9%29 in case I didn't link last time. Doesn't mean much if you don't read music, of course.
Guy (JzG)
For the questions on fair use of the scans: do the scans add something to the article that you really just can't get any other way? With album and book covers, it's *the* cover for the album. Is a score regarded that way?
It's functionally equivalent to a short sound clip, without the additional burden of being one person's interpretation of the work. Or you might liken it to a photograph of an individual. It is a picture of the work described.
Does it add to the article in a unique and meaningful way? I'd argue very strongly yes. If you read music, the excerpt tells you an enormous amount about the work. The out-of-copyright ones, which would mainly apply to Victorian music hall performers, are very unlikely to be rejected from those articles.
I would say it's equivalent to including an extract of a book in the article about that book. Would we allow that (beyond quoting a specific passage when discussing that passage)? I doubt it...
They key to fair use of such material is the percentage/amount you are using. How many pages are those scores? Mgm
On 3/31/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Fri, 30 Mar 2007 22:52:06 +0100, "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
For the questions on fair use of the scans: do the scans add something to the article that you really just can't get any other way? With album and book covers, it's *the* cover for the album. Is a score regarded that way?
It's functionally equivalent to a short sound clip, without the additional burden of being one person's interpretation of the work. Or you might liken it to a photograph of an individual. It is a picture of the work described.
Does it add to the article in a unique and meaningful way? I'd argue very strongly yes. If you read music, the excerpt tells you an enormous amount about the work. The out-of-copyright ones, which would mainly apply to Victorian music hall performers, are very unlikely to be rejected from those articles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requiem_%28Durufl%C3%A9%29 in case I didn't link last time. Doesn't mean much if you don't read music, of course.
Guy (JzG)
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
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On Sat, 31 Mar 2007 00:29:22 +0200, "MacGyverMagic/Mgm" macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
They key to fair use of such material is the percentage/amount you are using. How many pages are those scores?
41 in Bernstein, 80 in Duruflé.
Most online sheet music sellers give you a one-page preview. One page is no use for performance.
Guy (JzG)
On 3/31/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
For the questions on fair use of the scans: do the scans add something to the article that you really just can't get any other way? With album and book covers, it's *the* cover for the album. Is a score regarded that way?
A section of a score, especially with the main theme, would be a *huge* addition to many articles about pieces of music. A lead sheet for jazz compositions would be awesome.
I don't see why a short excerpt wouldn't be fair use, but I'm probably used to Australian copyright law in this regard.
Steve
On 30/03/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
What of scores from ChoralWiki? That is public domain, I guess we can borrow at will? Or should we restrict ourselves to the same level of caution? Note that some of the stuff on ChoralWiki is actually copyright, it's externally hosted, so I would have to watch that of course. Most of them are in PDF format.
Who owns the copyright for these? If members of the community, couldn't we encourage relicensing or (perhaps too odd) to copyleft license the first page for reuse by us and others? Does copyright law allow different licensing within a single work?
Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net writes:
....
What of scores from ChoralWiki? That is public domain, I guess
we can
borrow at will? Or should we restrict ourselves to the same
level of
caution? Note that some of the stuff on ChoralWiki is actually copyright, it's externally hosted, so I would have to watch that
of
course. Most of them are in PDF format.
I've always felt that, unless the materials are being actively developed/modified/improved (and it cannot be done better on Wikipedia), we should always seek to mirror as much Free content as possible - even if the metadata is degraded - simply because it adds redundancy and reliability to the Free culture community as a whole (not to mention the direct utility for WMF projects). If you have the spare time, I'd encourage to copy over what you can.
Finally, does anyone have a good, cheap or free converter from
jpeg /
tiff to a more efficient format?
Thanks,
Guy (JzG)
I generally use [[ImageMagick]] for such tasks - the command line "convert" program is particularly useful and scriptable for such tasks (ie, $ convert foobar.jpg foobar.png), and then use [[OptiPNG]] to compress the PNGs. They're both in the Debian repositories, so are easily gotten, free, and easy to use. Works for me, anyway.
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
I have just uploaded a scan of the first page of Bernstein's Chichester Psalms. I believe this satisfies fair use in illustrating the article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chichester_Psalms and I am confident it does not interfere in any way with the publisher's ability to profit from their intellectual property. This particular scan includes the copyright statement, which is a bonus.
Acceptable? I would be very surprised if not.
Next up: Duruflé Requiem. Problem: not much happens on the first page, the obvious target for a scan here is the first page of Movement II, the Kyrie. This does not have the copyright statement, although of course I put it in the image description.
Acceptable in illustrating an article on the Duruflé Requiem? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requiem_%28Durufl%C3%A9%29 Probably OK, I would say. Yes?
I don't see a problem with either of these. The presence of the copyright symbol should not matter. If something is protected by copyright it is so with or without the symbol. Similarly, a wrongly claimed copyright is not made valid by addition of the symbol.
OK, I have a pretty extensive library of scores, and most of them I can find a single page, usually the first, which illustrates the work well and does not in any way interfere with the copyright owner's ability to profit. But there are some hard cases.
- Works where the work is listed in a section in the article on the
composer. In order not to overwhelm the article I would be inclined to scan a single system, but that does not fundamentally change matters; it would not have the copyright on the scan, but it would be on the description page, the question is, would fair use justly apply to use in illustrating a discussion of the work in an article on a wider topic?
When applying fair use, or the more rigid fair dealing, credit needs to be given to the source. Adding this to the image caption would be enough.
- Works where there are multiple editions, for example Copland's Old
American Songs. Here I have one of a number of different versions, and available in different keys. Simple Gifts, an iconic melody (it's the melody in Appalachian Spring), probably the best known of all the American songs he collected. Melody by Trad, filtered through Copland, filtered again by the editors of my edition. Valid?
Traditional songs themselves are not copyrightable. Copland's arrangements would be copyrightable, but if he failed to renew the copyright (in 1972 for a 1944 work) it would have gone into the public domain.
Clearly in the case of a short work like windmills of your mind (theme from the original Thomas Crown Affair, keep up at the back there) a full page is too much for fair use, a single system or two systems is the most one could justify. Would the same apply to Summertime? It's a short work, but part of a whole opera.
Gershwin died in 1937. Were his copyrights renewed?
I have few reservations about the Messiah, the Watkins Shaw edition is now pretty much ubiquitous and Novello publish both that and Prout anyway. Beethoven Missa Solemnis,no problem, only one edition I know of.
Mozart Requiem - a problem. The Novello edition, completed by Sussmayr, is far and away the most widely used in the UK, but there is a newish critical edition completed by Robert D. Levin which includes an amen fugue taken from sketches by Mozart. Would a single system or two systems from that be acceptable in discussing that critical edition in the article on the Mozart requiem?
It's important to know when and where these editions were originally produced. The original work by Handel, Mozart and Beethoven is obviously in the public domain. Publishers' arrangements may nevertheless be protected, but republications do not restart the clock except to the extent that they add new material.
What of scores from ChoralWiki? That is public domain, I guess we can borrow at will? Or should we restrict ourselves to the same level of caution? Note that some of the stuff on ChoralWiki is actually copyright, it's externally hosted, so I would have to watch that of course. Most of them are in PDF format.
I don't do anything in music so I'm not familiar with the site. While it's good to check their copyright analysis, the presumption is that the material is usable.
Finally, does anyone have a good, cheap or free converter from jpeg / tiff to a more efficient format?
Sorry but I know less about these technicalities than I know about copyright.
Ec