[why did I post this? They are refusing to accept money for something they have the right to be paid for....the design, layout and engraving work for The Adoremus Hymnal, which is excellent.]

They have licensed the use of it to the St. Michael Hymnal where it now appears.

But now...they have decided to not license it and keep it from being disseminated to English-speaking Catholic with no discussion, nor reason aside from the looming change of Mass text.

Is the hymnal I am working on going to be thrown away annually, recyled with newsprint? If so, reasoning behind the looming Mass text change would be silly....and they never even asked.

They are well within their rights.

It's just strange that now I have to pay to have someone set the Mass text even though someone else has already set it? I wasn't going to contact Adoremus since it is theirs and it didn't seem exactly right to say, hey, you really know what you are doing and I want what you did...but then I saw that Ignatius had done it fro Adoremus and already also licensed it for St. Michael's hymnal.

If this was a recording, it would be a different story. [Mechanical License: You man not record anyone's music without permission. But once it has been recorded they cannot deny you recording of it. You must pay them, but they deny you.]

Maybe it's a matter of cooperation? Maybe I'm just chopped liver?

Chonak, let's talk.

penelope@ignatius.com

@Noel,
I wouldn't worry too much about it, personally. The Adoremus hymnal is a very poor piece of work, and I know some of the musicians who were supposed to be consulted to put it together. In the end, non-musicians made the decisions. It shows. By the way, have you noticed the page turns in it? hahaha! what trash. It is doomed. Requiescat in pace.

Is it possible they see your project as more or less reproducing their booklet, "Mass of Vatican II", Code: MV2-P, $2 each? This booklet also uses the Adoremus Hymnal colors, fonts and layout.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that we did not and are not asking for anything other than what they offered to the St. Micheal hymnal people...the opportunity to pay them for the use of work already done.

We can, of course, do it ourselves. And we already would have if they had not already done such a beautiful job. I refer to the Adoremus and St. Michael books and use that section all the time. I recommend it highly.

Jules,
I want you to know that at least one other church musician agrees with you about ADOREMUS 1.0.
I'm going to reprint a review of it I composed many years ago when I first got my copies on my blog.
www.musicgiftofgod.blogspot.com

PS: I finally got the posting format correct at 1:05PST

Kathy, Moving On may be my middle name, I understand. Here we have a liturgy that we may not print without paying the church to start with.

If you write an English Sanctus you cannot print it without getting permission from ICEL. Unless you do it in Latin, then there's no problem.

Does this mean that there is no value in Latin? Is their English mass text worth more money? Why are we allowed to pray it without charge?

Did the translators accept a fee for their work or do they get a percentage from the profits....and ICEL is a non-profit. Where does the money go?

Follow the money.

Okay, but you can't blame Ignatius for that. People can't be forced to share, and embarrassing them is not exactly a generous thing to do, is it?

Kathy, it's not a matter of forcing someone to share, rather the question is, why can one company purchase the right to use something that benefits the church and then, because the text is changing sometime off in the future it is not available to another company? And there is no discussion. No. It's final.

I think that their work is just about perfect. So if I recreate an engraving that is as close to perfect as possible and it turns out to be the same as theirs....now I'm guilty of copyright infringement. After all I have seen it.

And, if I use red and black effectively as they have done, that's also something that they have copyrighted now as port of their engraving. I know that red and black have been used for years, but they copyrighted it.

They've copyrighted the entire Order of the Mass without writing a word of it. The layout, the colors, the spacing.

Does anyone have a right to copyright the Mass?

They copyrighted red? They copyrighted black? Or did they copyright red-and-black? If so, better inform the Arizona Cardinals that their team colors break the law. Also, we'd better have a talk with Stendhal!

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Ths s gdd nws.

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Everyone remember...a copyright is worthless. All that it does is give you a right to attempt to sue somebody. I doubt that ICEL understands that. Unless they want to sue people...and never, ever, get into a legal battle with anyone who has more money than you do.

"Everyone remember...a copyright is worthless. All that it does is give you a right to attempt to sue somebody."

This is like saying that the pink slip on my car "only" means I have the right not to be towed, or that a fence around a sheep paddock "only" means I have right to own a shotgun.

A copyright says "I put a lot of time, money and effort into developing this layout, and it belongs to me. If you want to use it, ask. I may say yes, I may say no. Please respect my wishes. Thank you."

Well, Kathy, there is a huge difference. A bow tie is property because it is scarce and physically owned. It requires no legislation to make it private property. It requires only homesteading of original factors or trade through mutual consent. So called "intellectual property" is not scarce and not physical and requires legislation to make it property, i.e. it always involves forcing people not to effect copies of something that is infinitely reproducible. It is a modern invention unknown in earlier ages, e.g. Mozart, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Machaut, Brahms, etc. never knew of something called copyright. For the Church or Church publishers before the 20th century, recourse to monopolistic, state-enforce policies would have been unthinkable.

Does "scarce" have a special definition in economics?

Not so much as saving time and energy, but paying them for the excellent work! I was asking how much they charge, not for charity. Though charity does have its appeal.

Of course, this is the Catholic way. Ignore the Mass translations of the Anglican church and make out OWN!

"Short of the old GIA trick of changing three words in a hymn and copyrighting it..."

You left off the part where they insert an asterisk with the original words at the bottom of the page . That takes some real kahunas...

Jeffery Tucker,

My oh my, I am surprised at you!

By citing the "in Mozart's time," situation, with its lack of "copyright" understanding, you seem to be panning the very idea.


An advocate for "fair play" would not recite such apples and oranges equations about fair use and copyright -- and actually, "fair use" is what is the operational principal in some of the scenarios you seem to be responding to, which modern copyright does allow for. IP ("so called" --??--, as you write, for a long established legal principal and societal norm?) has given society great benefits and there is a plethora of reasons for not demonizing copyright law, especially in principal, and yes, legislation is where WE as a free democratic society get to weigh in on what is fair to the CREATORS (I would suspect their are a fair number of creative types here, who just might like to get paid some fine day). This "in Mozart's time" argument is really a canard. Who would want to go to the trouble and expense of typesetting a work except the originator, or sponsor of such, in those days? I am sure it was done, but not easily and not without great expense. There would be nowhere near the copyright infringement of recorded works today, for example, if one had to go to the trouble and expense of going into the studio and basically recording everything again from scratch as a "sound-alike, just to give a sort of parallel, though certainly an imperfect one. There is just no comparison of "in Mozart's time" with modern digital reproduction or "Xeroxing" and distribution channels.

As far as what is truly fair, in this arena, I do accept in principal the idea that one should not, per se, "own" translations of texts, especially in the case of liturgical texts and Scripture, as if these were totally original works. But this wholesale panning of copyright legislation, which is what you seem to be suggesting, anyway, is beyond the pale for those who speak, somewhat at least, in an advocacy capacity for any part of the creative community, church based or otherwise. Please help clarify if I have mischaracterized your position.

I realize too, that a discussion that starts or ends with bow ties may be completely tongue in cheek, but "scarcity" is a completely relative term here.

Jeffrey, I am glad you did dig up this old thread.
It keeps all the thoughts on a particular topic together, and simplifies searching.

frogman: "I forgot to mention that we did not and are not asking for anything other than what they offered to the St. Micheal hymnal people...the opportunity to pay them for the use of work already done."

Only by re-reading the entire thread, to see what Jeffrey was talking about,
did I see that you did forget to mention it!
Maybe if you had been more explicit they would have understood better?
It is difficult to read so many Forum posts and keep distinct the different thread content;
some assume knowledge only available in parallel threads.
The parallel threads content (context for this one?) is not coming to mind for me,
and with this isolated re-read, this thread strikes me differently.

I wish I knew the arrangements. I doubt that it was ever formalized. In those days, folks were just glad for someone to print stuff.

I have no idea. I seriously doubt it.