Copyright Kills New Music!
Beethoven's Diabelli Variations op.120 would have been illegal if composed in our days!
Those ideas are more suitable in the field of art music and probably less to the point for "commercial music".
According to the music publishing copyright rules, derivative works are not permitted. That means composing variations, a very common practice all through the music history, is not allowed now.
Just imagine the scenario around 1820's, the time the greatest variations set, opus 120 by Beethoven, has been composed based on another (famous) composer's (Anton Diabelli) theme...
Now figure out one highly successful composer and businessman Anton Diabelli composing something of a "hit" and a relatively obscure Beethoven composing one of his greatest piano works based i.e. "derivative" on that.
Now imagine today: can anyone compose, perform and publish a set of variations on a song by Gershwin or a Tango by Piazzolla. I mean without having to pay a small fortune to the copyright holders or infringing the law.
We all were told the fabulation of Copyright protecting the artist-creator. Is that true? Or is this a way to release our rights to someone else or some company, who will "take care" of our intellectual property. Sure, if we do so we will be able to get few pennies each time our music is performed. But what it costs really to the composer, to the society and to the world of Culture in general and broad sense of it?
The music we have composed and "given" to others to "protect it" is then removed from the free-circulation, it can not serve as one inspiring source to other composers, it will most probably refrain presenters to program it in concerts and festivals, as everyone knows, those presenters have a very hard time getting things into budget and therefore, the risk of presenting a more or less unknown composer gets near suicide when they will also have to pay non-negligible money for it.
People can not share it, you are not allowed to give a copy of it to a friend, you can not play it on your broadcast station, you can not reference it in your own work, you can not compose "on" it. With many other restrictions that seems to me a very high price to pay for getting a few pennies when and if the piece is performed somewhere. Moreover, the idea of paying the composer when the piece is performed is a non-sense too. Do you pay the electrician who have fixed your installation once, each time you switch on the power?
Then how the composers will make a living, one may ask. No composer (composing something else then purely commercial music) can live with royalties. So he/she has to find a way to make a living and that is not the point here. By thinking about ones own pocket money for one more moment, instead of the elevated social concerns stated above, one may also realize that allowing a wide and broad diffusion of one's own work will bring more jobs, commissioned compositions to its creator. Therefore it is far more profitable for the artist.
Artists should also know that there is plenty of licenses which can protect their works and allow people to share it as well. Copyleft and its various flavors, the GNU licenses, the various kinds of Creative Commons licenses are all professionally and expertly written and waiting for you to use them for your own work.
Adopting one of these for your work will not only profit to the society and cultural life of it but also to you as an artist. You will be able to reach people as you'd never thought possible, you will be better known in the field and you work will get to as many people as possible and isn't this the point in creating a work of art?
by: Mehmet Okonsar
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