Re: Headword for unfretted-strings

[Graham Percival]

On Tue, 7 Oct 2008 10:43:28 -0400
Kieren MacMillan <address@hidden> wrote:

> Graham,
> 
> > waste time on this garbage
> 
> I find is baffling ___ and, frankly, more than a little sad ___ that
> you think discussing copyright issues is a "waste of time" for
> 
> > professors, composers, programmers, musicians...

Now that I've had a bit more time to think about it, I agree it's
sad -- very sad that copyright law is considered vital for those
groups.

Why should a professor of mechanical engineering need to know that
Peter Pan will never enter the public domain?  Why should a German
conductor need to know Canadian teachers are permitted to make
transparencies of material from textbooks, but must destroy those
transparencies within 30 days of the end of the class (even if
they teach the class on a regular basis every year)?  Why should a
somebody writing documentation for an open-source program need to
know that under French copyright law, time spent during WWII
doesn't count towards material entering the public domain?

There's a reason that lawyers spend one or two semesters studying
copyright law -- it's bloody complicated!  But I don't see this
complication as being relevant to the *actual* activities of those
people.  Professors are experts at research and teaching (maybe;).
Composers are experts at creating music.  Musicians are experts at
producing the desired sound from their particular instrument, and
hopefully also experts at working with other musicians.

Will a musician produce more beautiful music if they know the
difference between US "fair dealing" and Canadian "fair use"?  I
don't think so.  If they want to produce the best music possible,
it would be better to spend 100 extra hours practicing scales
instead of spending the same time reading those laws, papers about
their interpretation, important court cases, international
treaties about copyright, etc.

Cheers,
- Graham