From a netfriend, July 2003

Current copyright laws in most countries came into being in the 19th century when entire works were reproduced, thanks to improved printing techniques. One of the victims of mass reproduction was Encyclopaedia Britannica, whose 9th edition was reproduced in so many editions for the benefit of door-to-door salesmen! (They also sold several different editions of the King James Bible). This was serious business as it was sending the Edinburgh publishers broke. When I was in Seminary, I purchased at whole “pirated set” at a 2nd-hand bookshop; for “improvements” it included a 5-volume addendum of articles for the American audience. The quality of reproduction was about as good as photocopying a copy of a photocopy, but it didn’t stop sales in the USA; it was big business.

Re. protecting the work of composers. The 19th century was peppered with legal and illegal copying, both of musical works and songs/hymns. Hymnbooks at the end of the 19th century included acknowledgement of authors and composers. But anyone who still owns a copy of Sankey’s or Alexander’s will notice that few songs and hymns in their books acknowledge anyone. I can credit our forbears for writing music to the glory of God, but the only people who prospered were dear Mr. Sankey and Mr. Alexander!

Pirated copies of books (and especially textbooks) became big business in Taiwan in the 1950’s and 1960’s until considerable pressure from the USA and other nations stamped out the practice. In the 1970’s piracy sales in Asia turned to music when it was quite easy to reproduce cassette tapes. In Thailand I was able to purchase Christian music on cassette tapes, being reproduced by a Christian mission! In Indonesia, pirated sales of music on casette seemed to have had the tacit approval of the government, who charged stamp duty on every copy sold. There was a buck in it for everyone, at the expense of the authors, composers and publishers.

Sometimes composers and authors sell away their rights to make a buck. The Beatles kept control of their own music, even under contract with EMI, but then decided to venture out under their own “Apple” label. Alas, it became a financial disaster, so to get themselves out of hock they sold their rights to their own music. At one stage Paul McCartney and George Harrison were paying royalties to Michael Jackson (who bought the rights) everytime they played their own music! Eventually Paul bought back his rights, when he was on a better financial footing.

I was in high school in the late 60’s. We had a facsimile machine at the school library which reproduced negative copies. It was a pretty poor effort, and expensive too. It was far cheaper to buy a book for $3 than to copy it at 5-10 cents a page. Some book publishers decided to license workbook materials to school (school masters, we call them), which could be reproduced on spirit duplicators and Gestener machines. Xerox came out with its “miracle” machine in the 70’s and photocopied materials have been with us ever since.

Copyright has to do with reproduction of an author’s work It’s there to protect that work from plagerism in the first instance. In the second instance it’s there to protect the author’s/composer’s livelihood.

We had all sorts of excuses in the 70’s and 80’s about photocopying books and making pirated cassette and video tapes. Our arguments went along the lines that the publishing companies were making huge profits by charging higher prices for their works (they were!). In the 60’s I could purchase sheet music for 10-35 cents, by the 70’s the same sheet music was costing me $3.95-$5.95. No wonder church choirs were tempted. Books, too, became more expensive, especially in Australia. It was much cheaper to photocopy a book than to purchase one from overseas. But it wasn’t right. It was theft of intellectual property and we justified it in the same way a burglar justifies breaking into a house: “They’re rich – I’m poor – They are denying my ‘right’ to a good life.”

Well it just doesn’t wash. In the 1980’s several smaller publishers and music companies went out of business. They simply could not keep up with the rampant pirating of material. Subsequently, both the clients (authors/composers) and the customers suffered. That led to corporate takeovers, who now can charge ridiculously high prices for the real product on CD, DVD or print.

In the 21st century we now can reproduce music and printed materials more cheaply on our computers and video/cd/dvd recorders than anything that was ever imagined in the 70’s or 80’s when mass piracy became a cottage industry. But it still doesn’t make it right.

It pays in the long-run to always seek permission for reproducing materials for worship. With the advent of the Internet, it’s far easier to get that permission from authors, composers AND artists and photographers. Nearly everyone’s got an email address these days. And if you’ve got to get that permission from a publisher (or pay a royalty or licence) to reproduce the material, so be it. In the long run, it protects the livelihood and the creativity of those who laboured.

In today’s digital age we have all become publishers. That’s good! But with that capacity to reproduce someone else’s materials there are moral and legal obligations that go with it.

I don’t know how the law can be re-written to catch up with changing technology. Law enforcement is the bigger problem, now that we live in the Internet age. But the moral and legal obligations remain the same as they were with our forbears, whether they pirated or plagerised in the 19th century or the 20th —

Just because “everyone’s else is doing it” doesn’t make it right.