Copyright 4 Educators (US)

Lets start off by recommending Public Domain and Copyleft sources for the musical learning resources.

Mutopia has music scores that are free to distribute and modify.

The Free Music Archive has a decent ammount of music tagged as 'classical.'

Jamendo has approximately 740 albums that are tagged as 'classical.'

The Internet Archive contains thousands of Free Cultural artifacts.

why use term copyleft?

If I were teaching the history of music I would want to ensure that I could instruct using works from the last 50 years so I would limit the website to within the class to have complete flexibility for my students. I am not saying it should be this way. With any luck a significant amount can be found in the commons but what about stuff that isn't? Seems to me that's the point of fair use - enabling educators to use material for legitimate learning purposes without fear. Would either of you in your respective disciplines accept being taught from materials that were almost as "good" as but available on wikimedia rather than say what is actually the seminal work in your given area.

Lastly, since neither of you answered my query, the term copyleft is misleading because it suggests that Creative Commons (and others) are not part of copyright which is emphatically not the case as you both know I am sure. It also reinforces the divisive language that is used by the industry to antagonize users - it is language that disempowers rather than empowers which is the point of education it seems to me.

Except that some works are simply not available to be used unless you are prepared to apply fair use which I thought was the point of the scenario. On my question: check out Pat Aufderheide talk at Open Video Alliance 2010 for her thoughts on the language we use and how it does not achieve our ends. I would also encourage you to read Laura Murray's review of the film RiP A remix Manifesto. I would also say that there are some important differences between free culture, gift culture, and open source. One of the difficulties many artists have with the way this discussion is framed in how ultimately silenced they are by much of the language - or so I am told by art students (who I educate) Artists make art and will continue to do irrespective of the law as they have always done and will always do - the question for users is will they respect the boundaries that artists themselves choose? As a lawyer my job is to make sure that you as an educator can do what you need to do in your work but ultimately you as the educator have to be able to put your work in context. Same as for artists.

He can also take advantage of a lot of amateur work. Guitar, bass, and drum tabs are available online from multiple sources for a study of modern music. Bloggers write about contemporary concerts.