Return to BTJ Online

I expect Freud, the noted psychoanalyst of the Id, Ego, and Super Ego, fame would be able to explain at what stage in life, a person first perceives itself as an individual with recognizable differences and values, separate and apart from the others. A formative society historically promotes the Super Ego, suppressing the individual and the Id, in order to employ his or her energy for the group, or at least for those in charge of the group. Also, in a mature society, where the individual is denied the time, resources, energy, or leisure, necessary to recognize his or her “real person,” it may become impossible to resist the group Super Ego. I believe that was the lesson of Orwell’s “1984.”

Our society is more fortunate than Orwell’s, possibly because of the Internet. Our new age slogan might be, “buy a domain name and show your stuff.” That’s all that’s required and that’s what many have done. It had a novel effect, transforming what we called commercial art, otherwise known as poster art, into the copyright protected art of the web page - a more sophisticated version of the roadside billboard with off the road access and with moving words and talking pictures.

Anyone with the minuscule price of a domain name, an ability to create a web site, and the few bucks it takes to rent space on a world wide web server, can now proclaim him or herself to the world as the kind of individual that person thinks he or she is, or ought to be, with limited deference for the commonly accepted laws of decency and the laws protecting intellectual property. As it happens, in the intellectual property law, there’s a clear danger of becoming the slave of the Super Ego, rather than the free individual of the Id and the Internet.

Aside from the bloggers, where everyone with a point of view is in a virtual Hyde Park, there are people wanting to proclaim, “Look what I’ve done.” It’s a poor spirit who labors without love and keeps his brainchild a secret.

One of several such “brain children” happens to arise from the very popular guitar as used in the expression of popular music. Where would the Beatles be without one? A case in point, visit http://www.guitartabs.com, a web site formerly offering guitar tablature donated free by the guitar playing Ids among us, and you will see the following statement:

GuitarTabs.com has received a letter from the counsel of the National Music Publishers Association and the Music Publishers Association of America demanding the removal of all tablature from this site. The letter can be read here.

You won’t have to read the letter, as I can summarize it as a seriously made threat and demand to cease and desist. To complete the threat, the lawyers have threatened to send a cease and desist letter to the company providing the web server for our guitar tablature web site. The grounds are the copyright to the popular songs, including Beatles songs, and the exclusive right of the copyright holder to create a derivative work, namely a better tablature arrangement of the music, a parallel expression to conventional musical notes, and a derivative to the limited tablature notation that is usually seen with published guitar music. While derivative works are improvements, and improvements are always good, it is the nature of a derivative work that it cannot exist without the underlying work, and for that reason, an infringement.

The sources for the tablature notations are uncompensated Id persons who have diligently created what arguably may be the best-improvised chords for any popular song or even for the great Bach, himself. As an interesting side note, while Bach is not copyright protected, the particular expression of chording tablature for his works would be protected, but for the expression of the tablature only and not for Bach’s underlying ideas or principles. In simple terms, as in a computer program, if there was no other way of expressing the idea or principles of Bach’s music, except by using that particular tablature expression, then no copyright protection. However, that only works where the underlying work is not copyright protected.

For those already thinking of Linux and the free systems and applications available through the Internet, we must remember the originator made it free and any Linux variation to be protected by copyright, must be original, contain a minimum of creative value, and must be only one of at least a few possible variations of expressing the underlying principles contained therein. A search of “free Linux,” will display numerous systems, many with applications and free for the download. I like my operating system but my proprietary and copyrighted applications acquired at considerable cost, while steady and reliable, are aging, and there is a need to stay up-to-date.

Not to be left out, on the patent side there is the human Gnome. Even though existing in nature and for that reason not patentable, we are told that Congress, while recognizing that the relevant distinction was not between living and inanimate things but between products of nature, whether living or not, and human-made inventions, microorganisms that are the result of human ingenuity and research, may be patented if novel and unobvious. The rationale extends to parts of an existing product of nature, a part of a person’s DNA that is isolated and reproduced as a result of the intervention of human ingenuity. Not being a biologist, I’ll be content to leave it there.

However, there are many variations on the patented biology, not unlike the case of un-free guitar tablature or the free Linux. Here it gets a little tricky because some variations may be the last best cure for a serious disease. But the public interest is only a consideration, the protection given to inventors, another and perhaps stronger.

You may be asking why can copyrighted material be downloaded or copied from the TV. That would appear to be no different from copying the guitar tabs. It is, and the difference is the U.S. Supreme Court decision permitting copying, but not modification, of let’s says 24 Hours, for later viewing, otherwise known as time shifting. Guitar tabs are not time sensitive.

Freud, I can only guess, not having the opportunity to place him on my couch and ask him about his dreams, would say there is an inner real person called the child in all of us, craving attention and anxious to display his latest creation. I think it was Dr. Spock, the famous baby doctor, who said never spank the child.