Just about the time all of yesterday's contributions were being typed,
I spent an interesting afternoon with Steve Cox, who trades as Laguna
Rolls.  He has a very nice perforator he built himself (with a stepper
motor and intelligent control allowing 200 punch rows per inch,
deliberately designed to cut from live MIDI performances), and a couple
of hundred titles in the catalogue.  Some recuts, some new from MIDI.
He even has an automatic MIDI to Duo-Art conversion, although how
effective it is I don't know.

Anyway, one of the things we talked about was copyright.  Steve has a
license from MCPS (see John Farrell yesterday) which allows him to make
rolls of copyright material, and has to enter each roll he sells into a
form naming title, artist, composer, etc.  From the 30 seconds I had to
look, the fee appeared to be 5 or 10% of retail.  He has to pay 350 UK
pounds up front and then deducts each roll from that.  Steve doesn't
put any royalty stamp or mark on the rolls themselves.

There has been one change to copyright law in the UK since the
conditions John described yesterday.  In order to harmonise laws across
Europe, a longer period of composer (and writer, painter, etc.) rights
has been granted -- it is now 75 years from death, not 50.  Mechanical
performance copyright remains at 50 years.  The change was a shame,
because the recent USA law changes had aligned them with most of Europe
after decades of confusion!  I believe the 75 years composer rights
come from 1960s Germany, brought in for families of artists killed
young in the 1914-18 war, it being argued that the lost lifetime should
be compensated.

So, in Europe you can copy any roll over 50 years old without reference
to the original maker, but will have to pay composition royalties for
most popular material.

Intriguingly, these new laws now recognise 'artistic rights', where an
artist can prevent changes to his work by others -- such as a film
being re-edited.  These rights can be purchased out by contract, and
usually are, of course.  There is now a push for artists being granted
a portion of resale value when (say) a painting changes hands at an
inflated price.  This is being resisted by the trade, needless to say!

Julian Dyer