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...
> 
> But that's your issue, I guess.

Copyright was introduced "to promote the progress of sciences and
the arts".  Do you think that including a 4-bar exerpt of a Ravel
string quartet reduces Ravel's art?  Or that he might composer
less music if we included the exerpt?  I don't think that anybody
seriously thinks that we would be *morally* wrong to include four
bars of anybody's music in order to demonstrate typographical
features of lilypond.  However, we would clearly be *legally*
wrong to do so.  In this case, I would argue that copyright law is
*determental* to the arts.

In fact, I think we'd be a lot better off if copyright law was
scrapped entirely.  It's impossible to control the spread of media
-- to quote somebody, "making digital bits un-copyable is like
making water not wet".  We should just bite the bullet and scrap
copyright.  Artists and scientists can be paid in other ways -- an
academic researcher could get promotions and tenure based on
published papers (hey, that's what we have already!), and artists
could be funded by comissions (some are already, and that was the
historical model).


Leaving aside those large-scale political discussions, focus on
the lilypond documentation.  Is it worth wading through copyright
law in order to determine if we can use four bars of Ravel instead
of four bars of Beethoven?  Yes, 20th century music involves more
complicated engraving, so it's better for showing off advanced
lilypond features... but really, a nice Beethoven or Dvorak string
quartet will achieve *almost* as most "inspiration", and with
*far* less headache.

The stated goal of finding an inspiration headword for strings are
*not* being met by discussing French copyright law, so this
20+email thread is "garbage"[1].

Cheers,
- Graham

[1] I have to admit that I found the "don't count WWII years
towards copyright for soldiers" law fascinating, and in another
context I'd be happy to continue discussing it.  Again, the
"garbage" comment was in the context of lilypond doc improvements.