Sharing Notation &/ Sahityam

[raguanu]

Problem:
We need Notation (or Sahityam) for a song. We search this forum. There's a relevant thread. Some one has already requested the same song. Somebody had the notation, and sent the same to the person in need -- thru email.

Still the resource is not very useful to the community here. If we need the notation for the same song, we should request again and wait for someone to send an email.

Sahityam is somewhat easier to share here. There are many sites with 100s of sahityams. Sharing notations seems to be somewhat tricky. Probably the notation is in a PDF or other document format, we can't just copy-paste them here.

What we can do

Document Sharing
We could use a document sharing service to upload the notation (pdf/doc or anything) and share the link here. This way the notation will be accessible to all in the forum.

Scribd - http://www.scribd.com/
YouPublish - http://www.youpublish.com/
Issuu - http://issuu.com
Google Search: Document Sharing


I know... it's quite a process to register in a site, upload and share the link here. emailing the person in need is somewhat straight-forward. In that case, the original person who received the score in email can do this. This way he/she is contributing back to the community from which s/he got benefited. Anyways, it's not too much to ask. Something like this would be nice -

Thanks for sending the notation mr. so-und-so. Here's the link for the same song. http://link-to-notation.pdf (download/read-online)

Some more thoughts

• One account in a document sharing site, say on behalf of rasikas. All notations go to that account. This will centralize the content, make it easy to find.
• Apart from Doc-Share sites, we could use some private web spaces (mirrors) from our community members. I can allocate some space for carnatic notations in my beautifulnote.com

Please do share your thoughts on this matter.

[srikant1987]

Ananth,

The notation PDFs are often obtained from scanning a textbook, and sharing it in public space maybe a violation of some copyrights.

It is legal (?) to lend a book to your friend, but to make several photocopies of it and give them away, even for free (?), isn't. Again, to keep it in a library probably needs permissions from the author and publisher.

In the online analogy, emailing seems OK, but sharing on Scribd, YouPublish and Issuu seems to be, somehow, wrong!
---
However, your "One Account for rasikas.org " suggestion is a good one -- if you need to log in to upload or download. Hey, a common email account should work just fine for this, right?

[raguanu]

If sharing copyrighted material is a violation, sharing it by email is a violation too. That said, copyright laws have exclusions for 'fair' use; for reporting, educational purposes etc.

So, sharing notation in a document sharing platform (like scribd) should work for all non-copyright stuff without any issues. (like a doc file etc) and we should find a solution for copyrighted stuff.

I think there are two possible ways to share a notation from a scanned page from book -

• Upload & Share. Objections? Remove it.
  Imagine a world without youtube. We once thought youtube is a mass violation of copyright laws. How silly!
  
  Ok, someone posts a scanned page in scribd. Chances are, that it is covered under the fair use clause. (reproducing a small portion, for educational use.) Otherwise, ... and if the copyright owner (say, the book publisher) objects, scribd will automatically remove the page, or the uploader can take it down. As for as the forum is concerned, no violating material is hosted here. should be fine.
  
  Sharing is actually good. Besides, nobody pays any royalty to Thyagaraja, right?
• Transcription
  
  Gutenberg is digitizing western scores. Scanned pages are hosted in a place. Volunteers download them and re-typeset. The redone score is made available in the main site.
  
  Most of the publications own the copyright for the printed page, but not for the compositions themselves. Compositions of Tyagaraja, Dikshitar etc are way out of copyright. I believe compositions of recent composers can also be safely shared among enthusiasts for personal uses.
  
  So the idea is, to share the scanned pages/pdf in a place, and ask for volunteers to help re-type the composition. The book publisher can't prohibit us from sharing the resulting notation.
  
  One can use a simple text editor, word processor, arun's carnatic music typesetter, or try my own way of writing notations with inkscape I know, there's a bit of work involved here. But this is the only way to truely liberate our music sources from copyright restrictions.

IMHO Notations of ALL compositions of our great masters should be available easily, and freely to all. It's a basic necessity.

[raguanu]

Ananth,
However, your "One Account for rasikas.org " suggestion is a good one -- if you need to log in to upload or download. Hey, a common email account should work just fine for this, right?

By one account I meant, one user uploads all the notations. Whenever a notation exchange happens, srikant1987 gets a copy of the notation. During the weekend he uploads all the scores he received so far to scribd. In scribd, if I retrieve the list of files shared by srikant1987, I will get all carnatic scores. (You need to login to upload. But anybody can download)

I thought this will be a slightly nicer way than asking everyone to create their own account and upload notations in a doc-share service. Even if they all do, scores will be scattered all around the site.

Yes, somebody has to volunteer. But considering the small number of notation requests happening here, I think it won't be a that difficult.

[vasanthakokilam]

raguanu: Lakshmanji and I discussed this a little bit. Please check your email.