Re: nice stockhausen excerpt

[Reinhold Kainhofer]

Am Dienstag, 23. Februar 2010 02:15:55 schrieb Graham Percival:
> Unless the government of Canada webservers are giving me a
> different HTML file than you, your "checking" is flawed.  
[...]
> We are not doing research or private study.  We are not doing
> criticism or review.  We are not doing news reporting.  We are not
> an educational institution or library.

Sorry, guys, but isn't this discussion drifting into the wrong direction? The 
original post was about the GERMAN wikipedia example, so I don't see where 
Canadian copyright law comes into play.

With German pages, one can argue that they are intended for a German-speaking 
audience[*], so at most Austrian, Swiss and German copyright law is relevant.

([*] That's what the copyright lawyer told us in the law course (for law 
students!) on austrian copyright law, which I took last year...)



In Austrian Copyright law (UrhG) there is a section concerning quotations, and 
one can very well argue that the use on wikipedia fulfills the requirements:

     "§ 46. Zulässig sind die Vervielfältigung und die Verbreitung sowie der
      öffentliche Vortrag, die Rundfunksendung und die öffentliche
      Zurverfügungstellung:
        1. wenn einzelne Stellen eines veröffentlichten Sprachwerkes angeführt
           werden;"

translated:

     "§ 46. Permitted are the reproduction and dissemination as well as the
      public lecture, the broadcasting and public provision:
       1. when individual short passages of a published literary work are
          given;"

("einzelne Stellen" ~ "single spots" means only some short passages, not whole 
chapters, etc. The Stockhausen example is definitely a "einzelne Stelle")


Unfortunately, §2 of the UrhG doesn't explicitly say that music counts as 
"literary work", but the headline says that the law is for literary works, 
music, fine arts and for films. §2 then goes on to define "literary works", 
"fine arts" and "films", but leaves out musical art. However, one can also 
well argue that music art does not fulfill the definitions of fine arts and 
films, and thus best fits into "literary works" (which includes even computer 
programs, as the law explicitly mentions!).

So, according to Austrian law, I would tend to say that the Stockhausen 
excerpt is okay. I don't know any particularities of German copyright law, 
though. And German law is definitely more important for the German wikipedia 
than Austrian law.

Cheers,
Reinhold

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------
Reinhold Kainhofer, address@hidden, http://reinhold.kainhofer.com/
 * Financial & Actuarial Math., Vienna Univ. of Technology, Austria
 * http://www.fam.tuwien.ac.at/, DVR: 0005886
 * LilyPond, Music typesetting, http://www.lilypond.org