Last month I briefly blogged about my love affair with old automated musical instruments such as the player piano, player reed organ, nickelodeon, wind-up phonographs and my long association with the Automatic Musical Instrument Collector’s Association (AMICA).

June, 2008 was the first time that I was able to physically attend a local chapter of the AMICA, and I enjoyed meeting other people who collected and played these ancient instruments. One of the downsides of collecting the older paper-driven instruments is that in a lot of cases the paper, sometimes made with an acid-based wash, is deteriorating and some of the members are trying desperately to preserve this old music by copying the rolls, or by capturing the information into MIDI files or mpeg-3 files. These files are then put on the Internet for others to enjoy, allowing others to hear recordings of songs which the companies that produced the rolls have long been out of business.

I thought about this procedure of preserving this music, and felt there were a lot of songs that I had in my collection that I could put up on the Internet. People could then hear the sound of my instruments playing, as well as hear the music itself. As a Free Software person and a follower of the issues around copyright I would be careful to use a melodie that was long out of copyright, like “Greensleeves“. But something in the back of my mind began to nag me, so I sent email to one company who still manufactures player piano rolls and asked to talk to their legal department.

A very nice and patient man answered the phone, and I explained what I wanted to do. I explained that I would be sure to use a song that was an ancient melodie which had to be out of copyright by now, and I only wanted to do a few songs, perhaps “Greensleeves” and some ragtime melody that used a mechanism in my player piano called the “mandolin”. The nice man replied that Greensleeves was indeed out of copyright, but that the artist’s rendition of my Greensleeves roll might not be out of copyright. I began to feel the hackles on the back of my neck stand up.

The nice man continued by saying that the rendition of Greensleeves had been put onto a roll of paper, and that too included a copyright, so other player piano roll manufacturers would not just buy one roll, copy it, and sell it to other player piano owners.

Then the nice man mentioned the “Phonorecord copyright act of 1972”, which to me has always been as clear as mud, and which made this issue of rescuing an ancient song cut into fast-decomposing paper even foggier.

We ended up agreeing that if I made an mp3 recording of less than 30 seconds, off an old roll, from a company that was completely out of business, kept it completely for my own use and locked up so no one else could hear it, that I probably would not be sued. He also begged me not to use any of his company rolls in this task, as he really did not want to have to sue me. I thanked him for his time.

On the other hand I have stopped singing “Greensleeves”, even when alone in the shower, and have not been heard to sing “Happy Birthday” in public for years.

Carpe Diem!