Copyright law

(This is the stream-of-consciousness version of the above post.)

I think we all agree; copyright law can be pretty ridiculous. Exhibit A: the laws governing what recordings we can make. It's actually against the law for us to make recordings of copyrighted music and give them to our friends and family without permission from the publisher! So every year, Dad spends hours emailing dozens of publishers so we can make CDs for Christmas gifts. Most of the publishers give him permission, but we've had to exclude certain pieces from our recordings because getting permission was too difficult, because we couldn't get permission, or because we couldn't get permission without paying a fee.

And we usually only email the publishers of hymn arrangements and sacred music! We don't even bother trying to get permission to record copyrighted editions of classical music (the music itself is in the public domain - it's just the editions that are copyrighted). What if the music is memorized? What if we used more than one edition?

This area of copyright law strikes me as unbelievably stupid. If anything, publishers should support the recording of their hymn arrangements as free advertisement. Such recordings promote the sheet music - they don't obviate the need for it. If my friend gives me a recording of her playing Mr. Smith's arrangement of Hymn X, and I really like it, I don't think, "Well, I already have this recording. Guess I don't need to buy the music from the publisher!" Of course not! Instead, I'm much more likely to buy the sheet music than I would be if I'd never heard the piece before. If I'm not a musician, then I wouldn't have been buying the sheet music anyway, so my friend's recording certainly wouldn't have robbed the publisher of business.

These laws hurt us and they hurt the publishers. We need to make a change!