[r-t] Copyrighht

[John Camp]

At 10:09 on 29 October 2014, James Smith wrote:

> In fairness, I have always been under the impression that the reason
> for asserting copyright was to preserve free access to the
> intellectual property for the ringing community by preventing anyone
> using it for profit.  If that's not correct I am sure Tony or a
> resident lawyer will say so.

I'm not sure what "free access to the intellectual property" means.
What copyright protects is reproduction.  It doesn't prevent access to
the work.  (Which is not to say that the owner can't charge for
access, but that isn't anything to do with copyright.  You pay to buy
a book.)

A collection will be protected by copyright as a collection, provided
that it is original as a collection.  The individual parts of the
collection are not protected by this copyright (though they may be
protected as separate entities).  If I make a collection of, say,
English verse, the collection would attract copyright, though anyone
can reproduce Gray's "Elegy" without infringement.

So I expect that Tony's collection, being selected and arranged by him
(I assume), will be protected by copyright, but any individual method
will not be (unless the composer of the method chooses to assert
copyright).

The chances of anyone reproducing Tony's collection as a whole and 
trying to make money from it seem somewhat remote.

JEC