Happy 95th birthday to Lou Donaldson

[Stompin at the Savoy]

1 hour ago, Brad said:

Unless Mosaic has granted them the right to post these on their site, posting them seems like a case of copyright infringement. 

There are quite a few of the booklets on musicbrainz (not to mention liner notes for lots of other cds and lps).  As long as the set is out of print, I think it is a good thing.  Music listeners gain from the information and Mosaic doesn't lose a thing.  Once a set is sold out, they are not going to receive any revenue from it anyway.

(No, I have never posted any Mosaic booklet on musicbrainz.  I photograph them for my own use because my eyesight is not great and I have difficulty reading the hard copy.  My photographs are pretty amateur and I just turn the pages and take a shot and don't bother cropping etc; whoever is posting them on musicbrainz takes the staples out and does a fairly professional job of it).

Edited November 10, 2023 by Stompin at the Savoy

[Brad]

3 hours ago, Stompin at the Savoy said:

There are quite a few of the booklets on musicbrainz (not to mention liner notes for lots of other cds and lps).  As long as the set is out of print, I think it is a good thing.  Music listeners gain from the information and Mosaic doesn't lose a thing.  Once a set is sold out, they are not going to receive any revenue from it anyway.

(No, I have never posted any Mosaic booklet on musicbrainz.  I photograph them for my own use because my eyesight is not great and I have difficulty reading the hard copy.  My photographs are pretty amateur and I just turn the pages and take a shot and don't bother cropping etc; whoever is posting them on musicbrainz takes the staples out and does a fairly professional job of it).

Just because it is out of print and Mosaic is no longer receiving revenue doesn’t mean that they have given up any IP rights to the booklet. 

[Kevin Bresnahan]

2 hours ago, Brad said:

Just because it is out of print and Mosaic is no longer receiving revenue doesn’t mean that they have given up any IP rights to the booklet. 

There seems to a kind of blindness to copyrights by many posters here on these forums.

[Brad]

8 hours ago, bresna said:

There seems to a kind of blindness to copyrights by many posters here on these forums.

Not just here. 

[Stompin at the Savoy]

Cheezit, the booklet cops!  Plus the copyright absolutist police.  I don't know if you have ever visited musicbrainz but for darn near every record ever published they have cover art.   Are you gonna shut down every piece of cover art, liner notes, booklet on the site?  Those are all technically copyrighted too.  Or is it just Mosaic booklets that you are so outraged about?  Are you the self-appointed enforcers of liner note copyrights? Or are you gonna let the music publishing business take care of its own biz?  This stuff has been up for years and there is no sign that any record companies don't want their booklets on musicbrainz.  Most of the art is  probably posted by the companies themselves (including Mosaic) because it's free advertising for the music, which is really what they are selling.  If they were selling the liner notes (or if I were) that would be one thing.  Then musicbrainz would be in competition with the labels.  But the labels are not selling liner notes and are likely very happy to see them go up on musicbrainz.  (If mosaic sold the booklets I would buy some).

If Mosaic isn't kicking about it I don't see why you need to insist that these booklets exist as 5000 paper copies and that's it, nobody else is ever allowed to read them, because, um... copyrights!

[Kevin Bresnahan]

8 hours ago, Stompin at the Savoy said:

Cheezit, the booklet cops!  Plus the copyright absolutist police.  I don't know if you have ever visited musicbrainz but for darn near every record ever published they have cover art.   Are you gonna shut down every piece of cover art, liner notes, booklet on the site?  Those are all technically copyrighted too.  Or is it just Mosaic booklets that you are so outraged about?  Are you the self-appointed enforcers of liner note copyrights? Or are you gonna let the music publishing business take care of its own biz?  This stuff has been up for years and there is no sign that any record companies don't want their booklets on musicbrainz.  Most of the art is  probably posted by the companies themselves (including Mosaic) because it's free advertising for the music, which is really what they are selling.  If they were selling the liner notes (or if I were) that would be one thing.  Then musicbrainz would be in competition with the labels.  But the labels are not selling liner notes and are likely very happy to see them go up on musicbrainz.  (If mosaic sold the booklets I would buy some).

If Mosaic isn't kicking about it I don't see why you need to insist that these booklets exist as 5000 paper copies and that's it, nobody else is ever allowed to read them, because, um... copyrights!

But this really isn't about Mosaic per se. Yes, Mosaic's images are being used without them getting paid but it's even worse for Bob Blumenthal. Mosaic paid Blumenthal for those liner notes for the Lou Donaldson box.  Mosaic got what they paid for and they honored their side of the deal. They limited the publication of those notes to the booklet. Mosaic hasn't published these notes on-line.

It's Bob who is getting ripped off by having his work put on-line for free. He isn't getting paid by musicbrainz and that's the problem.

So unless you think every single written word should be on-line at your disposal for free, you shouldn't be OK with this any more than I am.

While I am not in the business of writing liner notes, I can empathize with someone doing their job and expecting to get paid but end up getting nothing.

Edited November 11, 2023 by bresna

[Eric]

6 minutes ago, bresna said:

But this really isn't about Mosaic per se. Yes, Mosaic's images are being used without them getting paid but it's even worse for Bob Blumenthal. Mosaic paid Blumenthal for those liner notes for the Lou Donaldson box.  Mosaic got what they paid for and they honored their side of the deal. They limited the publication of those notes to the booklet. Mosaic hasn't published these notes on-line.

It's Bob who is getting ripped off by having his work put on-line for free. He isn't getting paid by musicbrainz and that's the problem.

So unless you think every single written word should be on-line at your disposal for free, you shouldn't be OK with this any more than I am.

While I am not in the business of writing liner notes, I can empathize with someone doing their job and expecting to get paid but end up getting nothing.

There is no business model where Bob B gets paid for the sale of liner notes as a stand-alone product, correct?  So I am not sure how he is being harmed, unless you turn MusicBrainz into some sort of Spotify, in which case he would earn a pittance of a pittance.  Agree in concept he “should” be paid and legally that is correct, but not sure how that works in the real world.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

1 hour ago, Eric said:

There is no business model where Bob B gets paid for the sale of liner notes as a stand-alone product, correct?  So I am not sure how he is being harmed, unless you turn MusicBrainz into some sort of Spotify, in which case he would earn a pittance of a pittance.  Agree in concept he “should” be paid and legally that is correct, but not sure how that works in the real world.

But it's up to Bob himself if he wants to monetize his writings for Mosaic. Maybe he's writing a book with all of his liner notes? No matter - it's not musicbrainz's right to steal his writing to enhance their webpages without his consent.

A friend of mine is a really good photographer. He takes some incredible shots at the shows we go to. He's not dumb so he'd never go professional. No one wants to pay for photography these days... almost no one. To prove this point, he once got asked to take some candid shots at a concert that a musician was recording for release. He did. The artist released the CD with his photos and the artist not only didn't pay him, he didn't even give him credit in the liners.

Edited November 11, 2023 by bresna

[Stompin at the Savoy]

40 minutes ago, bresna said:

But it's up to Bob himself if he wants to monetize his writings for Mosaic. Maybe he's writing a book with all of his liner notes? No matter - it's not musicbrainz's right to steal his writing to enhance their webpages without his consent.

 

OK so you think musicbrainz is stealing Bob's writing to enhance their web pages.  Just as they are 'stealing' from the writers of most liner notes - right, I mean this is not about Bob and Mosaic, this is all liner notes and all liner note writers. 

But there is another way to look at this: you are advocating suppressing liner note information about Lou Donaldson and preventing the public from reading it.   And by extension, not just Lou.  You don't want the public to have free access to album covers in general because the artist and photographer won't get paid when we see an album cover on the internet.  

[Kevin Bresnahan]

The internet has put everything at our fingertips. Before the internet, if you wanted to read the liner notes to any LP, you would have to get that item in your hands. Having everything digitized and plunked onto a website has dulled our sense of the work that went into these things and pretty much reduced their value to the point where many people think it's pretty normal to post copyrighted material any time they feel like it.

I get that there is fair use at play here i.e. LP covers and possibly LP liner notes. But right now we're talking about the liner notes to a Mosaic box, which is more like a long essay or a short book. This is not a simple "liner note" being posted. I doubt that musicbrainz could claim fair use here.

Let me ask you this, if Mosaic decided to publish a book of all of the liner notes from their big boxes, would you consider buying it? I would definitely buy a copy for myself. But would I do that if every one of them was posted in full on-line for free? Maybe not.

[Stompin at the Savoy]

35 minutes ago, bresna said:

Let me ask you this, if Mosaic decided to publish a book of all of the liner notes from their big boxes, would you consider buying it? I would definitely buy a copy for myself. But would I do that if every one of them was posted in full on-line for free? Maybe not.

I would definitely buy it.  Possibly you haven't really looked at the mosaic booklets on musicbrainz.  Even the highest res is not terribly high res.  Many or even most of the images are somewhat dark and grainy.  They are enough to blow up and read the content and sort of see the pictures. 

You have a better argument suggesting that the mosaic booklets aren't liner notes than suggesting some sort of copyright absolutism.  However the booklets really do look an awful lot like enhanced format liner notes!  I regard cover art, liner notes, booklets etc as forms of promotional material for the main item - the music.  These all seem to follow a pattern: the contributor is paid at the point of sale (of the artwork, notes, etc) and no residuals are paid.  Suppressing liner notes and calling them proprietary information does a disservice to the artists, IMO.

[Brad]

13 hours ago, Stompin at the Savoy said:

Cheezit, the booklet cops!  Plus the copyright absolutist police.  I don't know if you have ever visited musicbrainz but for darn near every record ever published they have cover art.   Are you gonna shut down every piece of cover art, liner notes, booklet on the site?  Those are all technically copyrighted too.  Or is it just Mosaic booklets that you are so outraged about?  Are you the self-appointed enforcers of liner note copyrights? Or are you gonna let the music publishing business take care of its own biz?  This stuff has been up for years and there is no sign that any record companies don't want their booklets on musicbrainz.  Most of the art is  probably posted by the companies themselves (including Mosaic) because it's free advertising for the music, which is really what they are selling.  If they were selling the liner notes (or if I were) that would be one thing.  Then musicbrainz would be in competition with the labels.  But the labels are not selling liner notes and are likely very happy to see them go up on musicbrainz.  (If mosaic sold the booklets I would buy some).

If Mosaic isn't kicking about it I don't see why you need to insist that these booklets exist as 5000 paper copies and that's it, nobody else is ever allowed to read them, because, um... copyrights!

When people or companies create things, it is not without expense and if you want to use their creations, they need to be compensated for it. It’s that simple. That is the foundation of Intellectual Property law. I don’t know nor do you if Mosaic has consented to this use but it’s worth asking them the question. It’s entirely possible that Mosaic, being a small operation, doesn’t even know about the use. When I was working, we had a large IP department and if someone was using their IP without permission, they would send cease and desists letters. 

[JSngry]

Is musicbrainz selling or otherwise profiting from hosting these images? 

[Stompin at the Savoy]

5 hours ago, JSngry said:

Is musicbrainz selling or otherwise profiting from hosting these images? 

Nope.

[JSngry]

Are any actual, existing copyright laws being violated by this action? 

[Stompin at the Savoy]

17 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Are any actual, existing copyright laws being violated by this action? 

Technically, probably yes.  But this is true for virtually all the 'cover art' tabs you find on musicbrainz, not just Mosaic releases (ie damn near every record).  And for most of the album cover art you find on the internet.

[sonnymax]

Is this really an appropriate conversation to be having at a birthday party? Here's a possum head sammich and some cole slaw. Go grab yourself a beer while I put on a Sweet Papa Lou record, something with natural soul. 

[JSngry]

44 minutes ago, Stompin at the Savoy said:

Technically, probably yes.

Sorry, but "probably", is not an answer. It's a guess. 

[Stompin at the Savoy]

40 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Sorry, but "probably", is not an answer. It's a guess. 

Well, take a look at the back of any CD jewel case.  At the bottom it has a copyright notice.  Is posting a photo of that illegal by copyright law?  Probably!  I'm not a copyright lawyer.  At the end of every Mosaic booklet is a copyright notice with a date. So it's probably not legal to post that.  But if everybody has long been posting these things it becomes a fuzzy area, mainly subject to the copyright owner asserting their rights (which they never do because having people post promotional materials for your artist roster is generally a good thing).

Edited November 12, 2023 by Stompin at the Savoy

[JSngry]

It's still a guess, not an answer.

If it actually does violate any real law, just say so. It's ok. A lot of us live outside of these type laws.

But like some old guy said, to live outside the law, you must be honest. So just own it. 

And may be a little less free about pimping it here. 

[rostasi]

I thought people were paid a set price to write liner notes (well, I've been...)
and so why should any of this matter?

[Brad]

Copyright laws have a fair use exception, which is a complicated matter, but, suffice it to say, that if I post a photo of cd I’m listening to, that falls within the fair use exception. If I’m doing it for profit, no.

Fair use doctrine, https://copyrightalliance.org/faqs/what-is-fair-use/#:~:text=Fair use permits a party,be considered as fair use.

I want to go back to the Bob Blumenthal discussion for a second.  He probably writes his notes as a “work for hire,” which means that Mosaic owns the right to his notes. 

[Chuck Nessa]

50 minutes ago, rostasi said:

I thought people were paid a set price to write liner notes (well, I've been...)
and so why should any of this matter?

The entity that paid you has a claim.

[JSngry]

10 hours ago, Brad said:

Copyright laws have a fair use exception, which is a complicated matter, but, suffice it to say, that if I post a photo of cd I’m listening to, that falls within the fair use exception. If I’m doing it for profit, no.

Fair use doctrine, https://copyrightalliance.org/faqs/what-is-fair-use/#:~:text=Fair use permits a party,be considered as fair use.

I want to go back to the Bob Blumenthal discussion for a second.  He probably writes his notes as a “work for hire,” which means that Mosaic owns the right to his notes. 

So since musicbrianz is not posting for profit (and apparently not posting it in anything resembling hi-res), that would appear to be fair-use? 

[Brad]

35 minutes ago, JSngry said:

So since musicbrianz is not posting for profit (and apparently not posting it in anything resembling hi-res), that would appear to be fair-use? 

I don’t know if that fits in the fair use exception.