Letter from Tresona

[garfield]

This speaks volumes about you!

Three sentences speak volumes? Wow, you're a story-crafter!

My friends know I'm not such an enigma.

[cixelsyd]

I noticed the Uniform page on The Band Hall website says, "Uniforms for Less" and not "Uniforms for Free"

To avoid confusion, you should know that Keith Hall of The Band Hall and KeithHall of DCP are two different people.

[bill]

To avoid confusion, you should know that Keith Hall of The Band Hall and KeithHall of DCP are two different people.

As a side-note, I don't think they are from the Halls of Montezuma either. although I think Monty is. The Halls of Montezuma are a whole different family linage.

[Kamarag]

if you advocate exceptions to copyright, even the ones that are already there, since in this case non-profit educational institutions are already there.

That side of the debate has maintained that people like myself, Keith Hall and N.E. Brigand, by advocated existing or extensions to copyright exceptions are essentially denying property rights.

The truth about the educational exception, as all professional educators know, is that it is *very* narrow. Additionally, when folks talk about it here on DCP, it's almost always misapplied, except for a single exception earlier in the thread where the poster absolutely nails what it actually is (maybe I'll go back and figure out who that was). It's certainly not some catch all "schools can play whatever they want" exemption as some would seem ti wish it was.

[cixelsyd]

It seems we all acknowledge some extent of intellectual property rights apply, and differ only on the degree.

Take a moment to reflect on the root cause of this situation. If the designers of our activity were as creative as they think they are, and the judges/judging system were rewarding creativity as much as it claims to, original compositions should be a common choice among world class corps. Imagine all the angst we feel right now would only be about the loss of access to legacy media, from the bygone era when corps only arranged music instead of composing it themselves. Imagine the corps having the ability to sidestep licensing power plays by avoiding the copyrighted music.

Instead, all we have is an activity of copycats.

There was a period shortly after DCI established itself when corps at all levels, all over the world, took to copying top 12 charts beat for beat. This practice spread like a virus in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I thought that was as bad as it would ever get, but then came 2009 and the introduction of samples. Now "creators" can literally copy audio created by others, and play it over loudspeakers instead of developing their own sounds. Why we allow it - why designers do it - why judges reward it - and why anyone fails to license those samples - all these behaviors say a lot about the nature of this activity. It is an activity of copycats. The more they copy, the harder it gets to formulate a legitimate complaint about how much they should pay for the privilege.

Regardless, the debate over precisely how far intellectual property rights should extend is an interesting one. Please continue despite this brief interruption.

[Fran Haring]

Guess what, children....copyright and intellectual property rights ARE rights in the US. What kind of rights they are matters not at all.

Particularly when it comes time to write those checks!!! LOL

Edited April 22, 2016 by Fran Haring

[Eleran]

And basically, I am with Locke on this one. So was Jefferson, who penned the Declaration; and while he used the phrase "Pursuit of Happiness" instead of "Property" he also included the phrase "Among These" which indicated that there actually are other Natural Rights not mentioned in that document (example is Property).

Yet did not Locke also hold that unused property constitutes waste, which is "an offense against the common law of nature"? Of course, one could argue that such a concept applies more to the accumulation of unused natural resources more than intellectual property, but one could equally argue that intellectual property was not definitively meant to fall with the "Natural Right" of "Property". For that matter, I would be happy to argue with you that the entire concept of "Natural Rights" is entirely without merit (I think I got a B+ on that paper in law school ...).

And was not Jefferson one of the strong proponents of limited the duration of such rights, which he referred to as monopolies? "Monopolies may be allowed to persons for their own productions in literature and their own inventions in the arts for a term not exceeding -- years but for no longer term and no other purpose." I just wish he had filled in the blank so we knew for sure what he thought was an adequate period.

And as to whether copyright laws actually even "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" as intended by the US Constitution, one historian suggests that the exact opposite - Germany's early lack of copyright protections - was much more conducive to spawning progress than all the laws in neighboring countries which merely but an expensive bottleneck on the distribution of new works.

[C.Holland]

Really. What I wrote is basically the premise underlying copyright law in the first place: intellectual property doesn't exist of itself, but governments, in order "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts", as, for example, the U.S. Constitution says, have passed laws allowing creators to act as if intellectual property existed "for limited times". After that time has passed, the intellectual property reverts to its true owner, humanity at large.

By the way, that limited time was 14 years (with a possible 14 year extension if the author was still living) in the first U.S. copyright law. And life expectancy for adults today has not gone up as much as people generally think. A twenty-year old man in 1790 could expect to reach his late 50s. A twenty-year old man today can expect to reach his late 70s. But copyright has gone from 28 years not to 48 years but to 95 years (or more). That's the real piracy.

that's not piracy. that's giving the composer/arranger the ability to provide for his next of kin via their work.

[Eleran]

that's not piracy. that's giving the composer/arranger the ability to provide for his next of kin via their work.

Someone mentioned Janáček (here or on another thread). When he died in 1928 at age 74, both his children had already died, and he had no grandchildren. Yet still we cannot play some of his works without going through Tresona. I think that may be the situation NE Brigand was referring to.

[Eleran]

And here is an interesting perspective on the situation (written back in 2010) by one of the most popular younger composers of today, John Mackey. As it so happens, his music has been on my son's marching program for 3 of the last 4 years, in both high school and drum corps. (credit to George Hopkins for linking to this earlier today).