José Maurício Nunes Garcia (1767-1830)
Afro-Brazilian Composer & Organist
Who Composed Brazil's First
Opera
is featured at AfriClassical.com
is featured at AfriClassical.com
Dominique-René de Lerma:
COPYRIGHT AGAIN
The
heirs of Martin Gaye have been awarded $7,300,000 in a copyright
infringement case against Robin Thicke for plagiarizing Gaye's 1977 Got to give it up in the current Blurred lines, so reported Ben Sisario in the New York times
(10 March 2015). The judgment was based on the printed music, not
the performance, comparing the harmony, melody, and text of the two --
an outsider might suspect far more similarity at least regarding harmony
and melody by examining the whole corpus of pop music since the
Beatles, so the court brought in Charles Cronin from UCLA's Gould School
of Law as copyright expert.
It
often happens that a student arrives at an audition with a photocopy of
a copyrighted work for the pianist. The performer is denied the
audition.
At
my last visit to the Music Department of the Library on Congress, a
photocopier was right there for public use, facilitating illegal
copying.
A
well known conductor of a splendid choral group, was sued by Fisk
University's then president for calling his group Jubilee Singers, a
name not legally limited to the University's original ensemble and used
by many ensembles since 1871. The case was lost, but the innocent
conductor had to care for all the (substantial) legal expenses, despite
being completely exonerated.
I
am certainly not alone in having similar situations -- my logo was
reprinted in a California paper some years ago and there are online
performances of my editions of the music of Saint-Georges which even
lack acknowledgement.
The
most serious infringement relates to my edition of the Requiem of José
Maurício Nunes Garcia. I received a phone call from the conductor of a
small regional orchestra in the Midwest, stating that the rental of
parts from Associated Music Publishers was -- at $400 -- too expensive
for his budget. He asked if I would request AMP for a special rate.
They refused, of course. Then he asked me to identify the source for my
edition! Refusal again. Finally he called and said he would
personally transcribe the music from our Columbia recording and publish
the results at less than AMP's rate. I told him this would be an
overtly illegal act, quite apart from being an enormously laborious
task. He enlisted William Grant Still Music to advance the sales of his
result, but Judith Still refused to participate. (The infamous
conductor in question has a reputation for avoiding royalty payments.)
Then later Robert Leigh Morris sent me a photocopy of the pirated copy,
which bore a totally fictitious note of gratitude to me for having
granted this permission! I alerted the legal departments of both
Columbia and AMP to the crime, but neither ever replied or took any
action. Can criminals commit their acts, free from any legal action, as
long as the potential law suit falls short of an unstated settlement?
While applications relative to the electronic media beg for
consideration, the situation regarding traditional materials have yet to
be clarified.
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Dominique-René de Lerma
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