Bardic / Publication Question

[Heather Rose Jones]

On Tue, 5 Mar 1996, Ercil C. Howard-Wroth wrote:

> Here's a kettle of fish I'd like to throw out to all of you
> who do original work for various types of marketing and publications
> as well as for yourselves.
> 
> I publish (slowly these days) two bardic newsletters. I have
> been approached to have these publications put up on a Web page
> so that more gentles might benefit from them as well as give
> more exposure to the authors.
> 
> Now with the proviso that authors (hypothetically) have given
> their permission for this ... what do you think???
> 
> My concern is for the pirating of material and future lack of
> attributing to the original authors, particularly music... need
> we say the nasty word, but - plagarism -.  

If the copyright holders have given permission for such posting, then I 
would say that you are on firm moral and legal ground. In theory, you are 
no more responsible for people inappropriately using and disseminating 
material pulled off a web page than you would be for material xeroxed 
from a printed publication.  My own personal concern is that electronic 
users _as_a_group_ seem to have a much more cavalier attitude toward 
intellectual property rights than print users _as_a_group_.  In the realm 
of largely amateur writers -- such as SCA and filk song writers -- this 
attitude is abetted by a prevailing tendency to consider dissemination of 
higher priority than control of rights.  Thus "many SCA/filk song writers 
don't mind if their songs are distributed freely" gets translated to "all 
SCA/filk song writers don't mind if their songs are distributed freely". 
Now that I've had a chance to do some poking around on the web, I'm 
rather dismayed to find that people have seen fit to post copyrighted 
material of mine without leave or notification.

But this is what the authors need to consider before they give you that 
permission to post -- once they give it, presumably they know and accept 
the risks.

Personally, I'm rather fond of the format whereby you not only list the 
credits and copyright info, but include a note to the effect of 
"published by permission of the copyright holder", just to remind readers 
that it's the right thing to do.

Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn