Copyright help

Karl_Hedlund · July 3, 2012, 9:28am

As you might know, I’m working on a shamisen tab editor. It has shifted focus to become an online application you can use in your browser without having to install anything. The goal is to let you create pieces using your smartphone or tablet as well, but that is a later goal.

The main question now is how to share the songs. Basically, storing the notation for songs without the owner’s permission is illegal. My website server is in Sweden and it’s illegal there. I think Bachido’s server is in the USA and it’s illegal there as well.

Does anyone have any ideas? Currently it looks grim.

dmitry · July 3, 2012, 9:43am

Could you please be more specific on what’s on input and output? What kind of documents are exactly supposed to be stored? And all that stuff. Maybe there are workarounds.

Karl_Hedlund · July 3, 2012, 10:55am

I would store the notation in text format on the server. More specifically in JSON format. It would get an ID and people would be able to provide that ID when accessing the website and get the song loaded on their screen.

Furthermore I plan on trying to get PDF generating done by sending a file to the server and getting a PDF back. I don’t think this is illegal, because I’m not publishing notes for a specific song, you just convert one format to another.

Eric_Johnson · July 3, 2012, 11:26am

I think as long as it’s a personal interpretation, as in not lifted from a book, and it isn’t being sold for profit, it’s not exactly illegal. I’m not sure where other music notation sites have their servers located though.

Karl_Hedlund · July 3, 2012, 11:37am

I think as long as it’s a personal interpretation, as in not lifted from a book, and it isn’t being sold for profit, it’s not exactly illegal. I’m not sure where other music notation sites have their servers located though.

Yeah I think the legalties might be a bit diffuse. I know a Swedish site that hostes chords and song texts from a servern in Sweden were shut down. It might had to do with them having ads on the site, thus “making money” from it. From what I’ve read free publishing is also illegal. I need a lawyer

There are some obscure countries where you can get away with it, but my server is Swedish.

I think for song texts and chords that this copyright issue is pretty stupid. Any good musician can listen and hear what is played and transcribe the notation for it. Why should only good players have this luxury? You don’t lose any money as a song writer / artist if a random person learns to play your song.

dmitry · July 3, 2012, 12:47pm

I did a tiny research, just to find out more on the problem. All following is about guitar tabs.

The legal side can be summed up with following: “someone’s tabs of the song are considered artist’s intellectual property”. I think it can be applied to all countries with DMCA and EUCD.
Though there are some options of “Fair use” you’ll need to prove already in the Court
Most of the top Google’s “guitar tabs” servers are located in Netherlands .
I can store shamisen notation on my server hosted in Moscow for the time being. Or just on any Russian free hosting service.

Karl_Hedlund · July 3, 2012, 3:55pm

Thanks for the info K H!

Maybe that’ll be an option then. We’re talking very little space as the stuff that is saved is just small text objects.

I’ll check it out more once the editor gets ready for use. The idea is for everyone to be able to use it.

dmitry · July 3, 2012, 4:37pm

Oh those piracy people

Grant_Shamisensation · July 3, 2012, 5:41pm

K H, are you interested in becoming the first Agent of our Bachido Legal Team? Let me know before the positions fill up! They’re going fast!
If you’re really worried about it, couldn’t you make the site invite only? Obviously it’s always best to have it public (seeing as that is the idea behind spreading the love of Bachido), but at least you would be able to cover your ass from the internet police.

Luke · July 3, 2012, 7:15pm

I’m not a lawyer, blah blah blah…

My suggestion, off the top of my head, is to integrate the app with Google Drive for storage. I think this might not be too difficult. Dropbox could work too but I think Google Drive is cooler at this point. Could then use Google for authentication too. Files can be shared through Google Drive, etc. Could solve a lot of problems easily. I don’t see you having legal problems because it’s for private use (files wouldn’t be published online through your app) and the user base is relatively small. Of course, might want to read Google’s fine print.

Another option would be to store all the data locally using HTML5’s fancy new local database features. This would only make sense if you’re writing the app in Javascript, not a server-side language so much. And the Google Drive thing would be cooler in other ways…

Cana_Rochbell · July 3, 2012, 7:34pm

theres 30-60 free gigs of storage you could use on skydrive of hotmail by the way ^^

Karl_Hedlund · July 3, 2012, 8:21pm

Another option would be to store all the data locally using HTML5’s fancy new local database features. This would only make sense if you’re writing the app in Javascript, not a server-side language so much. And the Google Drive thing would be cooler in other ways…

Actually, that is already implemented! You have a list of saved songs and you can thereby access the key to the songs that have been saved. And yes, somehow we need to find a good solution to get a list of the other users’ files. Having a google drive solution only for your own private use would not be worth it.

The problem is you can’t share the local web storage. Some users might be crazy privacy people, so they might clean that storage often as well, although from what I’ve read the local web storage isn’t often in the usual Cleanup routine.

I had hoped that we could somehow integrate the login cookie from bachido into the site. Another potential solution is that we set it up at Bachido. Nevertheless, we need to store the stuff somewhere. I don’t think we will be getting complaints, but if there is a legit way of doing things it would be nice to find it.

And yeah, keep the advice coming. I work as a software developer, but I haven’t touched web stuff in years.

Luke · July 3, 2012, 8:53pm

Cross-domain cookie sharing isn’t possible without some mad trickery that I did once and am not keen on doing again. Facebook API is great for auth, though… Bachido uses that. Google Auth API is apparently pretty easy, but I haven’t done it.

I think Google Drive makes sharing easy… I haven’t used it for non-Google apps, though. “Old-fashioned” file import/export is another option.

Karl_Hedlund · July 3, 2012, 9:19pm

Just finished reading THE LAW. Basically, it’s a no go. We’re talking up to 2 years of prison and serious fines. Apparently they believe selling notation is a huge income for musicians. Meh…

I’ll try and get the server PDF generation done. Sharing can be done at each user’s risk by uploading the PDF somewhere and sharing the link to it. There might be a solution where you can share text files with the data needed to load it in the program as well, although it probably involves installing an ActiveX component.

Anyways the prime reason I wanted to make this was for the original artists to be able to efficiently create notation for their own songs. Traditional shamisen songs that do not fall under copyright are also a usecase.

Luke · July 3, 2012, 9:37pm

For text-based (i.e., JSON) data, good ol’ fashioned copy/paste in and out of a < textarea > is always an option.

Karl_Hedlund · July 3, 2012, 10:21pm

Yes indeed. I think this first version will be very beneficial. The authorities won’t go after single people linking to a PDF or JSON data of a song they’ve made, but if there is a server hosting everything then it’s another story.