Seeger discusses effects of copyright laws

Anthony Seeger described a person walking in the woods who suddenly understands the music of forest animals when he spoke about copyright laws in Rackham this past Friday.

Imagine this walker, Seeger said, shares the music with four other people, one who records it.

"Now you sit in the room hearing this music ... who owns the copyright?" he asked.

Seeger, the curator and director of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, spoke about the effects of copyright laws in a speech titled "Who owns Traditional Music? Ethics, Law, Class, Status and Intellectual Property Legislation." His speech focused on the exploitation of less-educated and poor artists caused by copyright laws.

Current laws state that the person who owns a copyrighted work owns the piece throughout their lifetime and can pass it on to relatives for up to another 50 years.

Seeger said that when companies purchase copyrights of artistic works, complicated issues arise surrounding the exploitation of artists and possible unintended uses of the works.

"The rich people no longer own mines and oil wells - they own intellectual property," Seeger said. "My feelings on (copyrights) have come out of working with people who I thought deserved more rights than they had."

Seeger also said copyright laws can be too vague and difficult for the general population to interpret.

The lecture also focused on the ownership of the music of native cultures.

"Copyright laws have an enormous effect on the way in which we can present diversity in music," said Music adjunct assistant Prof. Mark Clague, adding that he often doesn't have the funds to purchase the amount of sheet music he would like for his research, which focuses on music of the United States.

Clague said early 20th-Century music composed by women and African Americans is often owned by companies and is too expensive for researching professors to purchase.

Seeger also said copyright laws can be harmful to those teaching or researching music because the laws limit their focus to readily accessible work.

"My day-to-day reality of how I can think as a scholar is greatly influenced by copyright," Clague said.

Seeger said the profound effect of music on people motivated him to direct Folkways Recordings, a record company purchased by the Smithsonian Institute in 1987.

He said the mission of the company is to not just make money with music but to view it as a historical momento.

"Sound is an important part of the human experience. It moves people in many ways and is part of a lot of what we do and are," Seeger said.

Seegers said there is a need for copyright laws but that they need to be restructured to protect artists.

"What you have is a law that protects one group of people, ignores another and allows the first group to exploit the second group," Seeger said. "That happens to be the way copyright got started and I think it's the way it is still applied."

Bradden Frieder, an art history professor at Michigan State University, said Seegers' speech clarified the intricacies of copyright law and policy.

"It gave me ideas of what some of the copyright rules are and that I am not the only one puzzled by them," Frieder said.

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