This is an excellent article and series. I can’t wait for Part 3!!

You say that fair use clauses require that a copy must be temporary. I have never seen anything about that. Could you please show me where in section 107 this is mentioned. As a student I have never been given document that self destructed after a given time. Maybe I misunderstand you, or I missed something in the copyright law.

You also say that she doesn’t explicitly mention that the material is her own. By not doing so, is she really advising how to break copyright law? If I tell someone directions to drive somewhere and I don’t tell them not to exceed the speed limit, is that advising them on how to break traffic laws?

Section 107 of copyright law is very nebulous in many regards. This was done purposely to give great leeway to educators. As such, every university is left generating their own guidelines to help professors navigate these murky waters. These guidelines differ from university to university. When you look at the major court cases in area they are seem pretty far away from what is being done here. This isn’t exactly Basic Books, Inc. v. Kinko’s Graphics Corp. here.

Cheers,

And yes, you are assuming that I’ve written none of the materials I am handing out. I have a scales, modes, and theory curriculum that is quite lengthy. I have e-mailed copies of those items to students who have lost their paper copies in order to save myself the time and trouble of re-copying or printing those docs and mailing the paper copies.

As for storage, it’s my music. I’ll store it as I like. My CDs are all stored as MP3s now so I can’t damage the original CDs. It is the same concept, except I am throwing out (actually recycling) the originals once they are scanned in order to make space in my apartment.

As far as diminishing sales, all of my students show up for juried events with original copies of music in their hands, just like the judges ask. My kids buy 2 or 3 textbooks each. I spent several HUNDRED dollars in 2008 alone on digital sheet music downloads from Musicnotes.com. I do this so the kids have the songs they want for their lessons. Doing this also helps to keep the students out of sites that offer free “music”, because once they see me use Musicnotes.com, they are more inclined to use that service themselves. And we’re still not considering the numerous textbooks, orchestral scores, and print music I have purchased through local stores. So no offense, it’s my digital library. I’m doing my part to support artists and authors, out of my own pocket by buying original copies.

I had hoped the value of a DIY external drive construction tutorial would not have been lost on folks. If one of my hard drives takes a hit, I’m out 15+ years of teaching docs, photos, music, web site info, and live recordings from gigs. The ability to back all of that up is invaluable. That was the actual point of this blog post.

Peace,

Brittany

In your last post on this subject, you referred to the concept of “fair use” in an educational setting. While there are some allowances for this, they do not cover the type of project that you seem to be undertaking.

Two major qualifications for “fair use” in an educational setting are that the copies are temporary, and that they do not in any way reduce sales of the copyrighted work.

Neither is the case here… your digital copies are going to be permanent, and you refer to e-mailing copies to students, which skirts around the legal requirement to purchase a separate copy for them (it’s possible you are only e-mailing self-made teaching materials or public domain content, but you do not indicate that).

I do not mean to criticize you for your personal actions with your music, but I am very disappointed to see two articles on this site advising other music educators to break copyright law, and showing how to do it easily.