
GUS Musician's Digest       Thu, 14 Apr 94 16:50 PST     Volume 6: Issue  14  

Today's Topics:
                       MIDI files and copyright

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Date: 14 Apr 94 09:44:08 BST
From: John Wexler <wex@festival.ed.ac.uk>
Subject: MIDI files and copyright

There is copyright in the composition (what the composer writes), in
the edition (what is printed on paper) and in the performance (what is
recorded on CD, for instance).  If you create a midi file, then it almost
certainly counts either as a composition, an edition, or a performance,
so you have copyright ... but you may also have violated somebody else's
copyright.  If you use, distribute, or perform a MIDI file, then you may
be violating copyright.

If you buy (say) a CD, you are buying the right to personal "social,
domestic and pleasure" use.  You mustn't play it in public, even if the
public are not paying to hear it.  You don't get the right to use it in
connection with any business, even if you don't make money with it -
i.e., you can't play it as background music in a workshop for your
employees - nor even for charitable or non-profit purposes.

Of course, not all of that is enforced.  But if you think "I can get
away with using a CD like this, therefore it's legal to use MIDI files
in some analogous way", then you may get a nasty surprise. 

    John Wexler

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End of GUS Musician's Digest V6 #14
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