I used to live in England, where I wrote and published several books, one of them a music encyclopedia; and before that I edited popular science books, the copyright of which I did not own but which had my name on them. That was in the last century. To this day I get checks twice a year from the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society, because in Europe nobody in a school or a library can copy or download anything without paying. A few years ago I gave permission to a teacher in England to assign one of my books to her class, not thinking of any income; I got several hundred bucks a year for a while.

Last week a European friend wanted some info available in a book I happened to have; I didn't want to copy-type several pages, so I went to a FedEx shop to have copies made, and the kid there made a great show of looking in the book to see that it was copyrighted (duhh) and refused me service. Information? Fair use? Review purposes? The kids at FedEx are being trained not to be able to use their own judgement so that FedEx can cover their asses because American copyright law is a shambles.

Donald


On Jul 2, 2013, at 6:44 PM, Steve Ramm wrote:

away from "FOLK MUSIC" to other things. Can the next person please change the subject