Re: Solfege Resources -- 404 bach chorales in Lilypond format with Movable Do solfege.

[Phil Hézaine]

Le 02/01/2011 18:59, Michael Ellis a écrit :
> Hi Phil & Graham,
> Thanks very much for the information and discussion.  It's all
> extremely useful.  Let me see if I can paraphrase a few points that
> are influencing my thinking:
> 
> We all seems to agree that:
> 
>    1. The "music" of the chorales (the sequences of pitches and
> rhythms notated in the Breitkopf edition) is public domain.
>    2. The Breitkopf edition itself is also in the public domain.
>    3. Margaret Greentree's XML files do not contain any copyright
> assertions other than for the PDF output.
>    4. Her site has the following text in the footer of each page:
>         " © 1996-2010 by Margaret Greentree, some rights reserved.
> Free midi files and sets, ongoing corrections.
>          This site may be browsed, referenced or linked. Download the
> ftp files, but do not use images or music for financial profit.
> Commercial use of material without permission from me or the artists
> is an infringement of rights reserved."
> 
> Given the above, it seems that an important question is whether her
> reservation of rights applies to distributing material created by
> applying LilyPond to the notation sequences embodied in her XML.   I
> don't mean to sound like a lawyer here (and I'm most assuredly not
> one), but to the extent that her notes match those in public domain
> editions, one could argue that no copyright is possible.
> 
> On the other hand, I'm not sure that failing to declare a copyright to
> the XML files necessarily invalidates a copyright to the digital
> representation she created and one could argue that the translation
> produced by MuseScore (via xml2ly, I think) is a purely mechanical
> re-representation of her work.
> 
> As to my own contributions to this work, I am ok with dropping
> commercial clause and issuing it with either the CC license or the
> Free Art license or both.  So I think we need to wait for a response
> from Margaret.  Hopefully she will be amenable to what we would like
> to do.
> 

Hi Mike,

Sorry for the trouble I cause but for the future of the project it seems
necessary. The Margaret's work is not trivial and we are discussing the
"some rights reserved" assertion. Besides, may be she is not alone. You
did the right thing when you send her a mail.
Be patient is the best way. Let us hope an answer in the week.
About the difference between CC / Free Art license, if I remember
correctly, the latter takes in account in a more suitable way the Berne
Convention about copyrights.

> Needless to say, another alternative would be to replace her work with
> yours, Phil.  I think you said you've got about 300 of the chorales
> already transcribed.  Is that right?  Would it be difficult to plug
> your note sequences into the format I'm using?

You're right. And with your skills I think it could be automated.
If you want I can send you the template while we are waiting for a
response. Be sure of my solidarity.

> Cheers,
> Mike