RICHARD ROBINSON'S TUNEBOOK :- COPYRIGHT NOTICE.


I've had various conversations, over the years, concerning permissions to
make various uses of various stuff from this site, and there are a few
things that I've found myself repeating over and over in email - so perhaps
it'd save a bit of time for us all if I write them down here, as a starting
point. Please note, I Am Not A Lawyer.

Suppose we start from the beginning - the basic idea is that copyright is
the property of the person who did the work. If you make a tune, for
example, then you own the copyright on that tune; which means that if
anybody wants to make use of it (record it, publish it, do something with it
in public), they have to make a deal with you in order to get your
permission. Traditionally, this is understood as money, but other things are
possible, as with the various "free" licenses that software can be published
under - same sort of principle. Just to confuse things, let's note that
"property" includes the right to pass it into somebody else's ownership;
copyright can be sold, inherited, and so on. This right continues for a
period of time after the original maker's death, and when that period has
passed, copyright no longer applies and the tune is "in the public domain",
meaning that people can use it however they want without needing anybody
else's permission.


How does that apply to this material ? Confusingly; because there is more than
one sort of "work" involved :-

Firstly, the tunes themselves :-

* Each tune here was made by somebody, sometime [footnote 1]. There are a
	couple of tunes here that I did make, and thus own the copyright on as
	usual, but with that minor exception they're not mine, I don't own them.
	Sometimes someone else does.

* Most of them, so far as I know,  are in the public domain, but not all,
	some of them are copyright. Where I know that a tune is copyright, this
	information is included in both the image and the ABC source.

* If I have included anything to which anybody has rights that I am not
	taking account of, they should please  contact me so that we can correct
	the situation.

* Where copyright does apply to a tune, it is your responsibility to make
	your own arrangement with the holder concerning any use you may wish to
	make of it. It is the copyright holder that you need to contact about
	permission, royalties, etc etc - not me. I can't give permission to use
	other peoples' tunes. If a tune is in the public domain, there is no
	copyright-holder, no-one's permission is needed.

* Of course, there is a major caveat here - if copyright exists on a tune,
	then this is the case whether or not I am aware of it. I may not be; my
	knowledge in this regard is a long way from perfect -- the informal
	processes by which tunes like this are often transmitted are capable of
	changing the notes, rhythms and structure of a tune, transposing it,
	mangling the title, attributing it to a completely foreign country, and 
	completely forgetting who made it --  and once this memory is lost I don't
	know of a reliable or general way of finding it out. Thus, the absence of
	any copyright information on a tune here should certainly NOT be taken as
	a guarantee that the tune is in the public domain, it could also be a
	demonstration of my ignorance.


Additionally, regardless of the copyright status of each individual tune,
there is a whole other set of work involved in notating these
transcriptions, preparing the collection and presenting it here (roughly,
this means the ABC and html files and the images, as opposed to the musical
content of the tunes). Again, these are owned by the person that created
them (in this case, usually me, Richard Robinson, though not always. Some of
the files of ABC transcriptions come from other people. This is noted within
the files). This is published under the following conditions :-

* My interest in publishing this is that the tunes should be played. I put
	these tunes online for the sake of their being learnt, played, heard,
	danced to, and generally enjoyed. The material here may be copied,
	distributed, used freely, it may not be sold. You are not being charged
	for these files, nor may you charge anyone else for them.

* You are intended to take this in the same spirit as whichever "free
	software"/"creative commons" license is most appropriate, changing
	whatever is necessary to make it applicable to musical notation.

* If you pass any of this material on to other people, all copyright
	information and other header information must be kept attached to it.

* If you make any changes to any of this material, you should take
	appropriate steps to see that credit goes where due and no confusion
	results.



[footnote 1] Indeed, possibly by several people at different times.
The question of individual property rights as applied to an aural tradition
is a very upsetting thing to think about, and I have no idea what to say
about it here.


--------------------
Richard Robinson
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/music/Info/RRTuneBk/index.html#contact