Make mine a blackcurrant leaf and licorice tisane
Posted: 26 Jun 2021 09:10
because proper tea is theft.
A propos of intellectual property theft, it may seem odd to raise the subject here. Anyone who has edited Handel, or more prosaically James Kent, will be aware that plagiarism has always been rife; and where would CPDL be without its unacknowledged "tribute editions" taken without attribution from editors of yore at Novello, Stainer & Bell, O.U.P., D.D.T. usw?
Personally I am fed up to the back teeth with the unacknowledged borrowings of [available when required] https://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Category:[available when required]editions. Despite his vaunted wide-ranging knowledge of all sorts of obscurities in the renaissance repertoire, he has, with xxx editions currently to his name, only managed to contribute 11% "new to market" items, compared with " new editions" on work pages with hitherto sole contributions by Sabine Cassola (13%) and me, Christopher Shaw (10%) to name the two most sinned against.
His editions have no coherent editorial policy; they halve (or not) the time values in exactly the same way as the original poster, without any consistency of treatment. Treatment of ligatures is exactly that of the originating poster. Features which he presumably doesn't understand (e.g. proportio tripla) are ignored; he has some independent thoughts concerning musica ficta, but these are not consistent; sometime he translates editorial musica ficta as composer prescribed, and other times he ignores them completely. It is almost as if they were terra incognita. Voicing decisions from copied editions (e.g. inversion of Cantus I and II, allocation of V or VI between A/T, etc. are slavishly followed, without remark, no matter how eccentric they may appear.
In a sense none of this matters very much, except that in every case that I've analysed, his editions are exactly the same as, or of marked inferiority to, the originals. Why would one post an edition they didn't believe sincerely was an improvement on what had gone before?
The answer is, of course, to pass of someone else's work as one's own achievement. Sabine Cassola gives her work freely under the CPDL copyright. I reserve personal copyright on my editions. That is in a pretty-well nugatory attempt to retain a modicum of quality control for editions that circulate under my name (I once had a bad experience with an edition of Purcell H's "Sound the trumpet" arranged illicitly for 3 vibraphones). But it is also an attempt to stop incompetent opportunists, such as the one under discussion, from claiming the kudos for items, some of which represent considerable time and effort, merely by scanning the sweat of another's brow. Neither Sabine nor I do this for profit, the appreciation of our work is sufficient (I am second guessing Sabine's reaction; I haven't spoken to her). The most objectionable aspect of this poster's antics is that he takes her CPDL copyright, wilfully ignores my personal copyright, and on the workpages detailing his editions discloses the copyright as CPDL, whilst in the supporting pdfs claiming his own personal copyright.
I hope that the CPDL administrators will arrange either to strike out this poster's spurious editions, or to ensure that he acknowledges the mainspring of his "editions" properly, and at the very least retracts the personal copyright that he has attached to others' efforts.
If you haven't worked out his name, I can supply it, with comprehensive reasonings, by personal e-mail.
A propos of intellectual property theft, it may seem odd to raise the subject here. Anyone who has edited Handel, or more prosaically James Kent, will be aware that plagiarism has always been rife; and where would CPDL be without its unacknowledged "tribute editions" taken without attribution from editors of yore at Novello, Stainer & Bell, O.U.P., D.D.T. usw?
Personally I am fed up to the back teeth with the unacknowledged borrowings of [available when required] https://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Category:[available when required]editions. Despite his vaunted wide-ranging knowledge of all sorts of obscurities in the renaissance repertoire, he has, with xxx editions currently to his name, only managed to contribute 11% "new to market" items, compared with " new editions" on work pages with hitherto sole contributions by Sabine Cassola (13%) and me, Christopher Shaw (10%) to name the two most sinned against.
His editions have no coherent editorial policy; they halve (or not) the time values in exactly the same way as the original poster, without any consistency of treatment. Treatment of ligatures is exactly that of the originating poster. Features which he presumably doesn't understand (e.g. proportio tripla) are ignored; he has some independent thoughts concerning musica ficta, but these are not consistent; sometime he translates editorial musica ficta as composer prescribed, and other times he ignores them completely. It is almost as if they were terra incognita. Voicing decisions from copied editions (e.g. inversion of Cantus I and II, allocation of V or VI between A/T, etc. are slavishly followed, without remark, no matter how eccentric they may appear.
In a sense none of this matters very much, except that in every case that I've analysed, his editions are exactly the same as, or of marked inferiority to, the originals. Why would one post an edition they didn't believe sincerely was an improvement on what had gone before?
The answer is, of course, to pass of someone else's work as one's own achievement. Sabine Cassola gives her work freely under the CPDL copyright. I reserve personal copyright on my editions. That is in a pretty-well nugatory attempt to retain a modicum of quality control for editions that circulate under my name (I once had a bad experience with an edition of Purcell H's "Sound the trumpet" arranged illicitly for 3 vibraphones). But it is also an attempt to stop incompetent opportunists, such as the one under discussion, from claiming the kudos for items, some of which represent considerable time and effort, merely by scanning the sweat of another's brow. Neither Sabine nor I do this for profit, the appreciation of our work is sufficient (I am second guessing Sabine's reaction; I haven't spoken to her). The most objectionable aspect of this poster's antics is that he takes her CPDL copyright, wilfully ignores my personal copyright, and on the workpages detailing his editions discloses the copyright as CPDL, whilst in the supporting pdfs claiming his own personal copyright.
I hope that the CPDL administrators will arrange either to strike out this poster's spurious editions, or to ensure that he acknowledges the mainspring of his "editions" properly, and at the very least retracts the personal copyright that he has attached to others' efforts.
If you haven't worked out his name, I can supply it, with comprehensive reasonings, by personal e-mail.