Re: Best of Music Studio

[Andy McFadden <fadden@fadden.com>]

Mitchell Spector <mitch2gs@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>:     Considering those bunch of Music Studio songs are in the public domain
>>: (which means you can freely copy, distribute and even modify) couldn't
>>: someone with them offer to send them over? It rather bothers me that when
>>
>>Thank you for volunteering to send them over.  
> 
>     I would if I could, but unfortunately I only have a handful of those
> songs files listed in that GEnieLamp issue. The "Time in a Bottle" CD
> as a whole is a copyrighted work and I hope you don't think I'm hinting
> that it'd be OK to share it as-is, but at the same time I would hope that
> individual files that were originally public-domain haven't now somehow
> lost their status because they reside on the disc.


The term missing from the conversation so far is "compilation copyright".

Someone with the "Time in a Bottle" CD-ROM could post, e-mail, or present
a public performance of the songs, so long as the original copyright on
the songs allows it.  If they're in the public domain, you can do whatever
you want with them.

You're paying for the time and effort that went into collection and
organizing the material.  "Shovelware" CD-ROMs tend to cost less,
because little effort has been made in collecting and organizing the data.
I've seen my CD-Recordable FAQ show up on shovelware discs being sold for
much more than the price of the media, but so long as it's distributed
in full and without modification, it's legal for them to do so.

Syndicomm can charge more than the price of the distribution media
because they're not distributing a freeware program.  They're distributing
a *collection* of PD/freeware/shareware, and you're paying for the
collection.  Freeware authors can specify terms that would exclude their
works from such a collection.  Such exclusions were ususally intended to
prevent a company from selling something like GS/ShrinkIt on its own though.

It's kind of a funny area in copyright law, really.  Posting one file is
okay, posting the whole thing is illegal.  At what point does it cross from
right to wrong?

>     What sort of got me is after it was pointed out, he said he's not
> interested in TIAB, and instead of alternate ways to get ahold of these 
> files (which make up a minuscule piece of it) was essentially told--if you're
> unwilling to pay to get them, then too bad.

That's the position of one or more individuals, not the official policy
of the comp.sys.apple2 community or the letter of the law.  They did touch
upon a valid point though: the market sets the price.  If you can't get
the material anywhere else, you have to pay.

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