9 Copyright: An Expert Panel

Our expert panel of musician-scholars have a variety of experiences with copyright in their work. They have engaged with the copyrighted work of others, leveraged the public domain, and engaged with how exceptions to copyright law work in different contexts.

Many musician-scholars like Christina Farrell and Kyoko Kitamura also express concerns about how complicated and necessary it is to have a basic understanding of copyright:

“I don’t feel like I’m well informed about copyright. Admittedly, it’s something that I probably just try to avoid dealing with.” Christina Farrell

“There’s a disconnect now with copyright law because it’s such an old concept. It grew partially out of the printing press, right? Now there’s no physical barrier to copying digital material. We’re obviously in a very different place. It’s so complicated. Simplicity, convenience, people understanding what it’s about is really important. I don’t think we’re there.” Kyoko Kitamura

When copyright expires and a work enters the public domain, we have new creative opportunities to engage with that work. Our expert panelists have found rich opportunities to leverage public domain materials to develop new work.

“I would say that thinking about finding uncopyrighted material has led to some very creative decisions in my past. I wrote a whole bunch of songs for my undergrad recital that were based on the Apollo 11 mission. And of course, one of the wonderful things about NASA is all their material is public domain. I could take and use as text all the transcripts from that mission and that’s all totally free to use. Getting to figure out ways that I could find stuff that was historical material that was free to use was a really great experience that led to a collaboration with a staff person at NASA who got me connected with them and actually helped me digitize some as of yet undigitized film… At the same time, limitation leads to some really creative discoveries as well. Both the barriers aren’t that high, but sometimes the barriers lead us to create some original things.” Robin McGinness 

Musician-scholars are also uniquely poised to understand how complicated it is having a balance in our copyright system. Because we are often creators and users of copyrighted works, we know that there are opportunities and challenges with the way that copyright impacts our creative research. Our experts are considering why copyright was created and how the system is impacting musicians, listeners, and researchers.

“Well, the problem with copyright is it’s all talking about money, isn’t it? Now that we’ve had these critical editions of composers—finally, for instance, Florence Price and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor—it’s wonderful to see their music, of course, published more and readily accessible. That’s the pro, that we’re getting it in the hands of organizations like we’ve never seen before. However, the restrictions that come sometimes with publications are difficult. The way the edits are sometimes made in a piece may not be at the highest standard, and it makes my job difficult. The frustrating side as a conductor if it’s only given rights to one publisher, then there’s no room for edits, there’s no freedom of that. So that’s the side of frustration. But to be able to see this music disseminated at such a fast rate is thrilling.” Jonathon Heyward

“I want to have the copyright of my recording or, if it turns up in something, someone uses it, I want to know that it has been properly credited to me and to my collaborators for the chamber music. It also brings up the issue of scores. The music that I dig up, perform, and record hasn’t been published in modern scholarly editions. These composers deserve to have a nice-looking A-R edition or Musica Britannica edition of their work as well. If you’re going to the library and you find Purcell, Handel, and William Boyce, should there also be an Elizabeth Turner volume there? I think that there should. Should that volume cost $150? I don’t think so. That’s where I start to have significant questions about the publishing process.

I’m working on two separate recording projects right now. Should I release them on a label? Should I self-release them? How should they be available? What is the best way to go about making sure that for that work, a significant amount of artistic work is protected? I haven’t completely made up my mind yet on how I’m going to navigate those challenges because the music has never been recorded before. These will be first recordings of pieces.” Paula Maust

“I am not very good at copyrighting my music or doing all that on the to-do list of the musician to get everything registered. But you know, one time, I made $30 from music distribution. That was really exciting. That was about 15 years ago. The only thing I’ve otherwise had a lot of experience with is things being published behind paywalls. So I personally, I’m willing to send anybody a PDF. I feel like most of my colleagues feel the same way. We’ve also had challenges with republishing because people want to republish things ad nauseum, and they don’t want to recommission, they don’t want to work with you to make something new and relevant to what you’re working on. It’s connected to this copyright thing where people would rather republish something and not pay, than commission new work.” Suzanne Kite

“Copyright has come up in different ways as I’ve worked with teaching artists across the country and in the communities of teaching artists. In my work, my goal is for people to use my lessons. There is a little copyright statement at the bottom of my lesson plans, but I want people to use them. I appreciate and encourage people to put my name on it if they’re using a song that I wrote or something in that lesson plan. If I borrow something from another teaching artist, I put, ‘This was by this person.’

“But in many ways, copyright would be a barrier to that goal, right? If I were particular about controlling who gets to use my lesson plans, it would be a bit of a barrier. I do know teaching artists who have developed very formalized curriculum packages. The work that I do tends to be very one on one. I create it just for the moment, right? I may or may not ever use that lesson plan exactly like that again. But other teaching artists have developed and invested a lot of time and energy in creating an entire curriculum kit, for instance, that has procedures and names for things and logos for things. Some teaching artists do have a much stricter feeling about copyright and the importance of copyright.

“There are two different approaches, and they’re both valid. I know also that there have been concerns among musicians in particular who will teach a lesson that’s a one-off lesson they’re creating just for that classroom experience. But they’re going to use a song that’s on an album that they wrote, for instance, or that they have copyright for. I know some artists have had some conversations around what’s appropriate in terms of copyright and sharing. Do we ask teachers to pay for that song if they’re going to use it in the classroom? What’s the right approach? There’s a lot of remaining questions about that in the field of teaching artistry that I don’t have all the answers for, but I know that it continues to be a question.” Christina Farrell

Our experts are also aware of exceptions that exist in copyright law and how to use them in the work.

“Copyright is one important tool in making sure that folks get credit for their original work and helps prevent that work from being exploited. Copyright has a place, but it can also be a barrier for folks who want to engage with original work in certain kinds of ways. There’s a tough balance in terms of my scholarship and publications.

“Most of the material I engage with is copyrighted. When I engage with copyrighted material in terms of songs, my use generally falls under fair use. I haven’t really encountered a lot of barriers. I picked a press that was really committed to fair use to engage with copyrighted material.

“But I am cognizant of not using too much copyrighted material, like too many lyrics from one song. In some ways, this has helped me to be clearer when I’m making an argument about a particular song and only using the parts of the song that are especially necessary. I’m not just reprinting entire song lyrics. Rather, this moment is especially important—this is why, or this is a particular example of a phenomenon I’m talking about. It has in some ways helped me to be clearer and more concise. Copyright has not been a huge issue.” Lauron Kehrer

They also have concerns about how copyright is impacting different communities and how Western ideas of copyright can impact the way that the system is implemented. Additionally, they also grapple  with ethical issues. Sometimes just because we can do something under copyright law doesn’t mean that we ethically should do it.

“Sometimes the legal use of copyrighted material does not always align with the ethical use of copyrighted material. For example, I’ve written about instances in which artists—who have a lot of resources, major labels, a lot of financial resources—can get sample clearance or legal permission to use preexisting work in their own work, especially work by black LGBTQ artists. But they tend to use that material in a way that often erases the queer esthetics and the queer meanings of the original source material.

“For me, this is a bit of a concern because queer artists already face a lot of barriers in terms of getting their music into the mainstream, getting people engaging with it. While their work might be engaged with, it is recontextualized in a way that they no longer have control over. This is an issue because of the larger social issues of homophobia and transphobia, and the way that queer lives are already invisible in a lot of ways. It’s not necessarily the use of preexisting material but the way that material is being reworked, even if it’s with credit, even if they pay the artists. It’s being recontextualized in a way that erases some of that queerness, which I think is problematic.

“At the same time, I work on hip hop, which historically is the style of music that originated by the creative use of repurposing and recontextualizing preexisting records. Hip hop was the dominant production style for a very long time, and we’ve seen now, the legal apparatus has cracked down on sampling without permissions. It’s pushed artists to create in different ways.

“But now it has created a production hierarchy where artists like Beyoncé, who has the means, can sample hundreds of artists on an album legally with permissions and writing credits. That’s great, but an independent artist who doesn’t have that label backing or financial resources cannot engage with those same samples because they just can’t afford it. This has created a hierarchy in which artists who have the resources can repurpose certain kinds of material. The artists who don’t have the resources can’t.

“I don’t know what the answer is; I don’t have to come up with the answer. I examine and talk about what this practice is doing. We have to be cautious in how we think about copyright and how we find the balance between artists maintaining credits and control of the material that they create. In acknowledging that creativity, how do we also make it so that it’s possible to engage with that material in certain ways? How are we stifling creativity in certain ways? Those are some things I’ve encountered in my research, and it’s tricky.” Lauron Kehrer

In this chapter, we have explore the multifaceted perspectives of musician-scholars on copyright’s complexities and its impact on creative work. Our experts have a variety of experiences: from Christina Farrell’s admission of avoiding copyright issues to Kyoko Kitamura’s insights into the challenges of copyright in the digital age, we can see the ways copyright impacts musician-scholars working in all modalities of research creation. As creators and consumers in the digital era, musician-scholars navigate a landscape where legal, ethical, and practical considerations intertwine, presenting both obstacles and opportunities. This dialogue underscores the ongoing need for musician-scholars to educate themselves about copyright essentials so that they can engage with, and at times help reform, copyright law.