[HANASHIR:10907] Re: Songbooks and intellectual property

[ItaSara <ItaSara...>]

<<I'll be interested to
hear your thoughts. >>

I agree with what you said, Ethan. The copyright business gets to be a little 
ridiculous at times. Maybe I am mistaken, but I was under the impression that 
the copyright laws were specifically geared to profit taking ventures. When 
music is performed in a service or is included in a songbook so congregants 
can sing along, that is a nonprofit situation, usually, and the few pennies 
the composer would get if a few pieces were purchased hardly amounts to 
anything, or so I have been told. In services, too, for example, a piece is 
used from one book or another. It would take a lot of money to purchase every 
book for every song that we sing. Does that mean to be legal, a synaogogue 
must limit its music to the purchase of one book? My  two cents worth.

Ellen Lerner
Rochester, Ny

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