On 22 Feb 2010, at 11:50, Graham Percival wrote:
That said, I can't see how using that exerpt could possibly
qualify under Canada's "fair dealing" provisions in the copyright
act. Distributing that de.wikipedia.org page in Canada would thus
constitute an infringement of copyright.
Since it is a small snippet, not affecting the commercial value of
the
original work, it should be acceptable also under Canada's "fair
dealing"
interpretation by its Suporeme Court:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_dealing#Canada
Please read that webpage.
"The fair dealing clauses[1] of the Canadian Copyright Act allow users
to engage in certain activities relating to research, private study,
criticism, review, or news reporting."
We are not doing research, private study, criticism, review, or news
reporting about Stockhausen. The context is advertising or
documentation for an open-source project. There is **no** provision
for Canadian fair dealing for such usage.
Even if our use somehow qualified as "research" -- which it
emphatically does *not* -- then we'd fail on the "alternatives to the
dealing". Was there "a non-copyrighted equivalent of the work"
available? Certainly. It would take me 15 minutes to write some
music which showed the same typographical features of the
Stockenhausen, without infringing on that copyright.
Read it yourself. Does the use affect the market of the original work?
That would suffice, as copyright law is essentially a business law.
But it is also a small snippet. And possibly: purpose is private study.
You do not have to qualify for all conditions, in my reading.
I repeat: there is no way that our use of Stockhausen would qualify as
"fair dealing" under Canadian copyright law. I cannot speak to
copyright law in Germany, Sweden, or other jurisdictions.
So what makes you so sure. Is that what a copyright lawyer has told you?
The official LilyPond documentation
should not include any material which infringes on copyright in
any country.
Formally, you only have to comply with the local copyright law.
What is the "local copyright law"? Is it Canada, where I wrote most
of the docs? Is it the UK, where I currently reside? Is it the
Netherlands, which is where Han-Wen and Jan are from? Is it from
America, where the webserver might reside? (I don't know where it is)
The country from which it is distributed.
If that country in the trade war against the US declares that it will
no longer acknowledge US copyright (I forget the country, but they're
talking about this), then can I (legally) download any Hollywood
movies I want from servers in that country? I don't think so.
It is up to you to decide, but they cannot go after those that
distribute it.
There was a case where material distributed from Russia was taken up
in New York, but it would mean that US law would be applicable for
activities done in Russia - and the vice versa, which is why no
country would admit it.
In addition to distributing the webpages ourselves,
a number of people redistribute the lilypond docs; I don't think
we should try getting Debian in trouble by including any
copyright-infringing material.
It is really up to them to learn about their local copyright law
and make
sure they comply.
We're not in the business of making it hard for linux distributions to
supply lilypond to their users. That's precisely why we're keeping
legally questionable material out of our documentation.
They only need to know what is valid in their country. In worst case,
they could put a link for the docs.
It is quite impossible for anyhow to know and follow the copyright
laws in all the about 200 countries in the world.
Hans
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