Paul Magnussen -> RE: flamenco transcription legal rights question (Dec. 1 2011 20:04:46)
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Let’s be quite clear about this: there are two separate questions about what you want to do: • Is it legal, and • I not, can I get away with it. Most civilised countries are signatories to international copyright conventions which stipulate that creative artists are entitled to exclusive use of their intellectual property. There are, as has been pointed out, various exceptions such as fair use for purposes like reviewing etc. Read the Wikipedia article. Flamenco is in an anomolous position in this respect, because any flamenco piece must be based on pre-existing material, or it wouldn’t be Flamenco. Thus in practice a flamenco artist might have trouble providing in a court of law that what you published was his own composition and not traditional. But that wouldn’t prevent him (or his heirs) costing you a lot of money in said court if he/they cared to try. As a matter of practice, people have have passing transcriptions around for the last five decades and publishing them on the Internet for two, and no one seems to give a toss. The one exception I’m aware of is that Alain Faucher seems to have been told to stop advertising Paco de Lucía transcriptions, concomitantly with authorised versions appearing. So if you don’t actually sell yours, and if they’re not Lucía stuff, you chances would seem to be good. And even if you did get stopped, it would probably be a Cease and Desist order (such as I imagine M. Faucher received) before an actual suit. But if you want to be sure of correct information, you’re going to need a lawyer.
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