Another reason to respect copyrights

I sing, both in choirs and as a soloist. The sheet music salespeople are well primed to explain copyright issues to choirmasters. Choirmasters in turn explain to choirs that if the choirs are discovered to be singing off unauthorized photocopied music, the choir is liable for thousands of dollars in fines.

People who sell large quantities of text have face-to-face contact with their buyers (choirmasters and academics come to mind). During those visits, they can to explain and threaten (maybe over a nice lunch). Amazon’s and Barnes & Noble’s relationship to their buyers is far more distant; it’s harder for them to stress the copyright issue to us.

Choirmasters and academics are probably more likely to want to cooperate with publishers for another reason: both want to publish before they perish. If they succeed in publishing one day, they don’t want to think that they may lose royalties because somebody thought it was cheaper and easier to use the photocopier than to order new copies.

Handel and Haydn should be in the public domain, right? Maybe. But publishers are businesses. They need reasonably profitable backlists in order to take chances on new composers. One of my favorite choirmasters published a few choral works. I think I’d have heard if they were runaway successes. Probably not. But what a thrill it was for him and for those who knew him to see his success, which was only possible because the publisher was making money from better-established works.

So, yeah, people may wish that sheet music were cheaper, but they don’t begrudge publishers their profits. If Hal Leonard moves into the Fortune 5000, though, let me know. I may change my tune.

An interesting note about musical copyrights: One of the first copyrights in England belonged to composers Thomas Tallis and William Byrd. In 1575, Queen Elizabeth granted them a patent to print and publish music, a decent monopoly, I’d say.

Diskclean My Brain

Maybe if I can figure out a way to erase useless knowledge and defrag my brain, I can finally actually remember how to take screen shots.

Here is some of the information I will be happy to sacrifice:

slide rules--at one of my first jobs I told a co-worker, only a few years younger than me, that my husband was in the last class at his school that used slide rules. "Katharine," my co-worker said, "what's a slide rule?"

carriage returns--fast forward 20 years. I was explaining to another co-worker how to execute some command. "Hit carriage return," I said. Her blank stare was a bleak reminder of how much of what I learned in my youth is now clogging my brain.

shave and a haircut--yesterday I tried again to explain to yet another co-worker how clever my tag line was, pointing out that her product costs six bits a week. "I don't get it," she said. Okay, I understand that many people do not know that a bit is 12.5 cents, but the well-educated men on whom I have tested the line find it quite droll. So I explained about pieces of eight adding up to a dollar. "I know that, I know that," she said.

Finally, the light dawned. "Have you never heard the song Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits?" I asked. The line depends on the song.

She never had. All I can say is that the loss of a common culture makes life a lot harder for marketers.