Copyright Permission

[Nick Baty]

Can't beat a bit of phone hustling!
Well done.

[Southern Comfort]

I don't think there's any good reason for HarperCollins to withhold permission for the current psalter, even if the new version is just round the corner, if Psalm Project is willing to pay a fee (as s/he says s/he is).

It's worth bearing in mind that royalties on the current translation, and a proportion of the royalties on the new version, go to the Ladies of Grail to further their charitable work for the Church. I personally am very happy to cntribute in this way.

Other liturgical and scriptural texts are a different matter. I do know that it took Darton, Longman and Todd many years to recoup their outlay on the translation and production of the English Jerusalem Bible - and they themselves were paying royalties to the owners of the French original (and continue to do so). Royalties to ICEL not only go to supporting the costs of running the organisation but are also used to fund English-speaking Bishops' Conferences around the world, especially the smaller ones in mission countries who would othewise have a hard time of it.

It's an over-simplification to think that those reaping the benefits are money-grabbers, although I agree that there is a moral issue here. Without wanting to rake up the same old stuff, if I were a publisher I would take a pretty dim view of having to pay ICEL for substandard texts (and that would be even more true of the new ones!).

[Psalm Project]

Psalm project is a HE...
The cogs of copyright-land are turning - I've had a response today... Hopefully, a definitive answer very soon.

[Nick Baty]

HE?
I'm sure your phonecall will have speeded things up!
Well done!

[Psalm Project]

HE = Male!

Strange thing... Harper Collins are now applying to the original copyright holder for permission. So, WHO exactly owns the copyright?

Maybe a Hebrew slave?

[Nick Baty]

The Grail and the Translators???

[JW]

Nick asked

While one understands your frustration, if the translation was freely available, how would the publishers pay the translators – to say nothing of the typesetters, printers, marketeers, admin staff, packing department etc etc.

Translations of sacred texts should be commissioned by the publishers and an appropriate fee agreed in advance for all the services involved - I would imagine this is what happens currently. The very last thing I want to suggest is that workers should not be paid. Of course everyone working within the Church needs a fair price for their work, including popes, bishops, priests, deacons, nuns and monks. Normally, translators, typsetters, printers, marketeers, admin staff, packing department etc etc are paid by fee or salary, I bet Bill or Sue in admin or packing don't get a share of each copyright payment. As discussed on another thread, I actually believe that many of our lay workers (and volunteers) get a raw deal - just look at some of the salaries in church-type advertisements.

But I guess Nick's question is actually to do with how the money is raised to pay for these costs. Some thinking outside the box would indeed be required. We might be able to find an answer in the way that we currently pay for our Church - via collections. That way, everyone pays for the spiritual - from translating sacred texts to contributing a present each year to the church cleaner to enabling our priests to live in dignity to enabling the Vatican State to run with all its different departments. Quite frankly, what we put in the collection plate each week is pathetic. Non conformists favour a tithing system as we know, the biblical (OT) precedent is 10%. The Lord loves a cheerful giver! However, if Catholics were to contribute even 1% of their income to the Church we wouldn't have a problem.

SC mentions the very good charitable donations that are given as a result of copyright payments - I think this is a bit of a red herring: if there is a moral issue here (and I notice no one has replied to the question at the end of my last post), it is not an appropriate get-out to donate a proportion of ill gotten gains to an acceptable charity - this would give a license to bank robbers, identity fraudsters etc: "it's OK if you donate 10% to a good cause".

[Nick Baty]

Given the tiny amount which composers and writers get for their work, we can't really complain about what we pay for the music in our parishes.

Most liturgical items are between £1 and £3 – much less if you buy them in a collection. Thanks to Decani, it's very cheap to include them in service sheets. But, remember, this is a free market and we don't have to buy anything. In fact, we could sing all that which we have to sing in the liturgy (Alleluias and other acclamations) from memory. So noone has to buy more than two copies: one for the cantor and one for the organist. Compare these few pennies with the many pounds you'd have to pay if you wanted a piece of early 20th century French organ music. I remember paying £10 for Gigout's Toccata around 20 years ago.

The only time we pay for texts – Grail, for example – is when we venture into commercial publishing. And then we're in the same market as the people we are buying from. And remember that "Bill or Sue in admin or packing" still have to be paid even if a publication bombs.

My only book – pub HarperCollins – pays me 7% of the cover price on paperback and 10% on hardbacks. Luckily I was paid a decent advance otherwise I'd have starved during the time I was writing it. The booksellers get 30%. As far as I can see, the only people to have made on that one are the people who are selling secondhand copies on Amazon – last time I looked there was one for £45!

[Psalm Project]

Nick,
Great news!
Written permission has just been granted for 500 books with reasonable conditions.
A fee of £150 must be made within 30 days to validate.
Sun is shining and I'm happy!

[Nick Baty]

That sounds very reasonable.
Well done.
Wish it had worked for me! Sob!
N

[mcb]

Jeffrey Tucker of the CMAA/NLM has been in correspondence with both GIA and ICEL over the ways in which the copyright on translations of liturgical texts is used. His latest view is that GIA will permit free posting of Grail psalm settings on the interweb ... [T]he digital concession gives a marvellous opportunity to those who want to contribute music to the Church, and who aren't bothered about making money from it.

Looking again at the policy proposed by GIA, I think Jeffrey Tucker's misread what they're suggesting. As far as I can see in the document, all that will be allowed is

For websites of a religious or devotional nature that wish to include parts of the Text in their content, a link to the RGP website must be attached. Each of the psalms is on a separate link; devotional sites may conveniently link to whichever, and as many, psalms as they choose.

That is, if you want to quote the text, the only way is to link to it on the RGP site. There's no concession to composers wanting to make their own musical settings available for download; in fact, all it allows for composers is that they may use their settings indefinitely within their own ecclesial communities, provided that no revenue is derived. Not a word about distributing them more widely.

So the lesson is probably: don't hold your breath. Or have I missed something?

[Southern Comfort]

So the lesson is probably: don't hold your breath. Or have I missed something?

No, I don't think you have. Tucker's so bound up in his campaign that he can't really see the wood for the trees.

I think there's an inherent danger in saying "this is for worship, so we shouldn't have to pay". It doesn't apply to anything else we use in worship. We pay for candles, altar wine, vestments, hymnbooks, maintenance of buildings, use of electricity........ without most of which we could not worship. Nothing in life is free.

[contrabordun]

Yes, but there is one very significant difference between those and the topic of this thread. For each of those examples, there is something close to an 'ideal market' (ie, many, independent, suppliers and many, independent, buyers with no market dominance by any participant, good information available to buyers about the products available in the market). In this situation, the suppliers are incentivised to improve their products and prices over time or to lose business. Competition drives prices down, to the benefit of the customers.

For English texts used at Mass, there is a monopoly. De jure this is true for the missal, and, even if alternative Psalm translations are allowed, in practice it causes so much confusion if you don't use the ones printed in people's missals and on weekly sheets that it is de facto true of the Psalms as well.

In that situation, the incentives on the monopoly provider are to control supply (in this case, for example, by artifically limiting access to the texts and to inflate copyright fees, so that parishes will buy only from 'house' composers) and there is no mechanism for reducing price: the provider can charge what the market will bear.

So in economic terms we have a market failure: it would have made much better sense for the church as a whole to levy the parishes to fund the translations centrally and then to have made the texts freely available, which is what I think the CofE did with its Common Worship texts.

[Southern Comfort]

In that situation, the incentives on the monopoly provider are to control supply (in this case, for example, by artifically limiting access to the texts and to inflate copyright fees, so that parishes will buy only from 'house' composers) and there is no mechanism for reducing price: the provider can charge what the market will bear.

I would agree with you, cb, if it weren't for the fact that we're talking about GIA. They are pretty strict about applying what are known as "industry standards" for copyright fees, for two rather important reasons. (a) They have an excellent relationship with many other publishers in the field, both Catholic and non-catholic. (b) They themselves have been badly burned by one other (Catholic) publisher in the field who is certainly intent on getting into a monopoly situation (but so far hasn't managed to do so), who charges rates well above the industry standards, and who operates a totally unfair tariff system. (What's a tariff system? This means, basically, "you can only use the same number of items of ours in your publications as we want to use of yours in ours, and we'll make that quantity as minimal as possible". No other publisher behaves like this, and what it effectively means is that composers published by this firm find that other publishers are not able to sublicense their works and so (i) they lose out on subsidiary rights revenue (so does the publisher, but they don't seem to care) and (ii), more importantly, parishes lose out on the opportunity to use quality music for liturgy, no matter who controls it.)

All by way of explaining why GIA know how important it is to be scrupulously fair when it comes to this sort of thing. I have already indicated earlier in this thread how different things would be if another publisher had been entrusted with the publishing rights for Grail IV. Once again, thank your lucky stars that it's GIA and not the other one.

[contrabordun]

Yes, but doesn't all that only prove that we're basically reliant on the publisher's goodwill?

The market is captive, in both directions: these products aren't much use to anybody else and these buyers can't go anywhere else. So why not just "take the production in house"?