Just contact the publisher and ask. They should know.
Indeed they should, although there's no absolute guarantee that the publisher still exists, of course; when there is no existing publisher, the best thing to do is contact the organisation that deals with such rights, licensing, etc. - PRS in UK, SACEM in France, GEMA in Germany, ASCAP in US, SOCAN in Canada and so on.
I think things are public domain before 1923, but there are always exceptions. You need to know the date it was published, the death date of the author, things like that. I think works are still protected for something like 75 years after the death of the author.
These are indeed facts of which one needs knowledge before deciding what one may and may not do within the law. The 1923 date is one that is peculiar to US; I believe that it applies to works published before that date as being in the public domain there. Copyright law varies from country to country; if only it didn't, there'd be far less misunderstanding of it and of how it is supposed to apply. There have been attempts at harmonisation of intellectual property laws, one consequence of which has been that a term expiring at the end of the 70th year following the composer's death applies in quite a few countries, principally in Europe. The absence of co-ordinated law internationally ensures that works that are in the public domain in some countries remain in copyright in others, which is a most unsatisfactory and confusing state of affairs. I personally had to deal with this anomalous situation in negotiating permission for performances of Sorabji's piano paraphrase of the closing scene from
Salome; the score of Strauss's opera was first published a little over a century ago and is in the public domain in US and certain other territories but is firmly in copyright throughout Europe and will remain so until 1 January 1920.
Even if it's not under copyright anymore, they could have made an arrangement of it, so you could be sued for using something similar to the new arrangement.
Broadly speaking, this is true, since the arranged work may be in the public domain but the arrangement itself can be copyrighted; however, if both the arranged work and the arrangment are in copyright, the rights of the original composer usually take precedence over those of the arranger.
Even if it's out of print, it can still be under copyright. They just don't print if they don't think they will make money. They can still hold the rights to it though.
This is very true (but see below).
You just need to know if it's under copyright still or in public domain. If you've got the publisher, that's a plus. That's not always possible, and then where do you go?
There is a Harry Fox agency that deals with that stuff. I don't know if they are on the performance end or the print end though.
I would just contact the publisher. Ask if it's in public domain. Or even if it's under copyright, ask if it's ok for you to make a copy and give that to a friend, no charge. If no one's buying the music, they might not charge. They might say they have to make the copy. They might say you have to include a copyright notice on the copy.
It's hard to tell on that stuff, but you're having good luck to have the publisher's name like that. Sometimes the publisher really doesn't care about the original work. They just want a return on the formatting work they did. In a case like that, you can go back to the original and use that if you were making an arrangement.
Let us know what happens. I'm curious. I don't really understand what you're asking though. I'm assuming you want to scan a piece of music out of an anthology and send it to a friend.
And if you want to be freaked out along those lines, I hear they put a little extra encoding into devices so they can track the media they produce. Scan something, and the scans have your machine's number embedded into them. Take a picture and you're camera's number is attached to the picture. Scary. If that's true. I even heard that about paper printers. Efforts to deal with counterfeiting.
Such efforts to overcome counterfeiting are usually a waste of time in terms of effectiveness, frankly; there's almost always ways around it. One point that's often overlooked in this matter, however, is that a publisher doesn't just have rights; he also has responsibilities attaching to those rights. I have come close to putting this to the test on one occasion. If a publisher has the publication proofs of a copyright work that is out of print, he is legally obliged to supply copies to bona fide purchasers upon request at a price that would be deemed reasonable in a court of law. Years ago, I wanted to obtain a copy of Frank Bridge's Second Piano Trio (one of his finest works, I think) which was then out of print and is in copyright. I contacted the publisher to ask for one but received no response. I repeated the exercise with the same non-result. I consulted a lawyer who advised that, provided that I could prove that I had made my request unsuccessfully in writing on successive occasions and that the publisher had received the correspondence, I could go ahead and photocopy the publication (assuming that I could find an original somewhere) without breaking the law, in that, in the unlikely event that the publisher then to find out and sue, I would win any court case without question. Fortunately, this matter did not go to court, but in my final request to the publisher I did state that, in the continued absence of response, I would follow this advice; this did the trick, although they charged me a small fortune for a tatty photocopy of a used score (not impressive, that).
Many people feel that copyright is an imposition that ought to be done away with altogether. Obviously, as a composer, I disagree that it should be abandoned, but I do agree that harmonisation and simplification of international intellectual property law would be a desirable thing, one not insignificant outcome of which might be a more positive public attitude to it. The question of how long the copyright term should be is a vexed one to which there can be no correct answer; to those who criticise terms such as 70 years following the composer's death as being excessive, I would point out that some works may not get performed until late in the composer's lifetime and others not until after his/her death, so some reasonable post-death extension of the term is far from unrealistic in practice. A composer can, at least in theory, sidestep the law by placing some or all of his/her works in the public domain everywhere by implementing a legal deed to that effect; this is equivalent to someone giving away some or all of their possesions. I am not aware of any such examples, however, although the bizarre laws of the former Soviet Union had a not dissimilar effect on quite a few of the works of Russian composers to the extent that many works by Shostakovich, for example, are in the public domain even though he's been dead for only a little over 30 years.
Best,
Alistair
Topic: What are the legal circumstances concering (©) when an author is dead? (Read 1516 times)