Not my usual uke-centric post this. But it’s an issue that affects anyone who has learned a song from the net, made a ukulele video for YouTube, written up a chord chart for a ukulele group or just attempted to learn an instrument.

There’s a lot of debate over copyright when it comes to making videos and putting up chords and tabs. But very little of it focuses on what I think is the biggest issue: the increasing length of copyright.

I have a dog on both sides of this fight. I rely on public domain work for my ebooks (and the actual book I’m working on). But the books themselves are protected by copyright. As I’ve gone along I’ve been learning more and more about copyright and the public domain. And the more I’ve learned the more unfair it seems. So here are a few things I’ve learned along the way that I think are worth considering.

Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer and I don’t even look like one when I put a suit on.

Copyright Law As It Stands (Sort of)

Like every area of the law, copyright is a bit of mess. Bits have been tacked on and patched up and there are some differences between countries (though they’re converging). But in general, when a person or company makes something (books, songs, music recordings, films) they have the sole rights to it for a certain period of time. After that, it moves into the public domain and anyone can use it however they like. So you can legally tab out a public domain tune and sell it, you can take a public domain video and put your own music to it, you can paint yourself into the Mona Lisa or you can rewrite a story and make a film of it.

The last bit of patch-up of the law in the US was the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) in 1998. This extended the length of copyright from 75 years to 95 years (for corporate works such as Disney film) or 50 years after the death of the creator (making it similar to the laws in Europe).

The act was retrospective, so anything that was still under copyright had its copyright extended. That means nothing has entered the public domain in the US since 1998 and won’t until 2018. If the pre-1998 laws still applied ukulele classics like Five Foot Two and Ain’t She Sweet would be public domain.

Patents and Why They Expire

Coming up with a new invention can take years of research and cost piles. So when someone comes up with a new invention the government gives them the sole right to use it so they can make their money back and then some. If they weren’t allowed to cash in on it, there’d be a lot fewer inventions and we’d all be worse off.

But after 20 years (mostly) patents expire. They need to. Because new inventions always build on old ones and every creative person stands on the shoulders of giants.

Good Stuff That’s Happened Because of the Public Domain

We need copyright for the same reason we need patents: so people keep coming up with new stuff. But – like patents – books, songs, films are built upon to create new uses. The first three re-uses of public domain material that pop into my head:

– Bob Dylan took this and turned it into this.
– Disney films built on stories collected by the Brothers Grimm: Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and The Princess and the Frog.
– Eliza Doolittle took this and turned out this.

There are plenty more (and better) examples. But I think all three demonstrate how creativity isn’t just the person who comes up with the initial idea.

Also, like patents, people learn from the creative works that have gone before. Hands up anyone who has learnt to play the ukulele without once learning a song that’s under copyright.

It’s an interesting comparison between patents and copyright. If 20 years worth of protection is enough to encourage multinationals to pour millions into research, is it really the case that a shirtless indie-boy will be unwilling to write a song unless it’s going to carry on making money until his grandchildren’s generation?

The Evidence

Some very smart people have looked into this issue. When the CTEA was proposed in 1998 a group of economists (amongst them five nobel prize winners including Milton Friedman) investigated and wrote The Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998: An Economic Analysis. Not being ones to hide the lead, the first part of the report is:

It is highly unlikely that the economic benefits from copyright extension under the CTEA outweigh the costs

You can judge the overall thrust of the report from that. But if you want to delve into it, it’s a short, easy read considering it was written by economists.

Also well worth a read is Chapter 9 of James Boyle’s The Public Domain which covers the European Commission’s evaluation of database copyright (stuff like phonebooks where data is collected). The EC were worried that the US database industry (which has no copyright protection) was much more vibrant than Europe’s. So they gave European’s greater database protection. The report looked into whether that change helped – it didn’t.

In the UK sound recordings, unlike most countries and most other forms of work, are only protect for 50 years (from the time of creation). A few musicians got up a campaign about this and Gordon Brown launched the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property (it’s got some good stuff in it, but I don’t recommend plowing through that one). They concluded that, while the current law should be more firmly enforced, the shorter protection doesn’t restrict creativity compared to countries with longer terms.

Why It Should Change

Copyright needs to strike a balance between the return an artist rightly deserves for their work and the right of society to its own culture. Of course, if you create something rad-tacular you absolutely deserve to your jacuzzi full of supermodels. But at the moment, the balance is way out of whack.

The continued extension of copyright has been justified by the increase in life expectancy. I think that’s entirely the wrong way of looking at it. What needs to be acknowledged is the increasing speed that ideas are being built on recycled and improved on. The speed of innovation now is so much quicker than it was when copyright first came into use. And the speed with which art is assimilated, remixed and re-imagined is similarly quick.

Because the law hasn’t kept up with this change of pace (and has gone in the opposite direction), people are starved of their culture. A copyright term of 95 years means the public domain is outside of living memory. And when there’s such a large gap between the time of creation and the ability to develop it, it stagnates. It doesn’t feel right that we don’t have any direct access to art created in our lifetime. And when people feel the law is unjust, they don’t follow it. Here’s what the Gowers Review said (3.26):

Copyright in the UK presently suffers from a marked lack of public legitimacy. It is perceived to be overly restrictive, with little guilt or sanction associated with infringement. While the law is complex, this is not principally a problem of coherence, but of a lack of flexibility to accommodate certain uses of protected material that a large proportion of the population regards as legitimate and which do not damage the interests of rights holders.

There needs to be more of a trade-off between respecting copyright and an extensive and fresh public domain. It’s a trade-off picked up in this article in The Economist. They recommend a 14 year term renewable once (the same terms as the first ever copyright law from 1710) in return for greater protection of those works that remain copyrighted.

I could live with that deal. In fact I’ll say right now, if I’m not writing about ukuleles 14 years hence I’ll make the ebooks public domain. If I am, the ebooks will get there after 28 years.

Actual Clever People

There’s loads more I wanted to say in this post – like orphan work, renewable extensions, how stupid retroactive changes are and It’s A Wonderful Life – but it’s on the long side as it is. If you want to find out more from people who are actually clever, check out:

– Free Culture by Larry Lessig and his TED talk.
– The Public Domain by James Boyle and this talk by Jennifer Jenkins who co-authored Theft! A History of Music with him.

There are a lot of very good reasons to hate this guy, but still I quite like him. And he’s obviously bringing a lot of teens to the uke. So another nevershoutnever for them (particularly since the stuff I’ve seen for this song seems completely wrong to me).

There are a lot of interesting chord shapes in this one – naming them I’ve gone for straight-forwardness over technical accuracy. With the D6 in the chorus, if you prefer you can play a straight D instead without losing much.

Suggested Strumming

Thi strum will get you most of the way through the song:

d – d u – u d –

Mostly you do that once for each chord. The exceptions:

– the G chord
– twice for every chord from the second A onwards in the bridge.
– a few bits that are just down strums. On the ladadas 3 downs on the G and one on the Gsus2. One down strum for each chord in the middle section.

For variety you could throw in a bit of:

d – d u d u d u

Pingy Bit

The little tring that crops up at the end and at intervals in the song is done with harmonics. Pay attention to the second photo on that post – it’s played the same way. You want to lay your finger very gently over the 12th fret (so it’s only just touching) right over the wire itself. Then strum down. If you don’t get your tring move your finger around and experiment until you do.

No competition for the video I enjoyed most this week: a match made in cheese-metal heaven between UKESTAR and The War Ponies. Epic beyond belief. If you want to hear the song again – and you will – check out Gio’s edit of the video. And if you’re still not satiated there’s the making of video.

Also this week: the Agony Aunts (The Corner Laughers in disguise), another one from Bob Brozman’s Wukulele performance, some extended jazz noodling from Tomoo Yamaguchi (complete with bass solo) and plenty more.

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Mainland are following Kala into the pastel and plastic ukulele field. Interesting that both brands seem to be distancing themselves from the plastics ukes. Kala market theirs as Makala. And the Mainlands are missing the logo on the headstock and seem to have Gecko on the soundhole sticker. Also hoosierhiver (of Mainland) was playing down expectations on the UU thread.

Another Kala trick that looks like it’s catching on is the thinline travel uke. Here’s one from Ana’ole.

Another guitar manufacturer bustling into ukuleles: the hilariously named BadAax.

Photo: College boy, playing for a pile of men.

Long time friend of the blog, Shigeto Takahashi‘s album Roots Trip is for download on iTunes and on CDBaby. Must have tracks: Hilo March, Kohara March. Unfortunately, two of the best tracks (Peanut Vendor and Rhapsody in Blue had to be dropped for copyright reasons).

Hull Ukulele Group have made their Halloween/Guy Fawkes songbook available to all

Catalogue for Cairns Uke Art Exhibition (via Herman)

Stephin Merritt hasn’t been playing ukulele much recently but he still some nice things to say about it. But the most interesting parts of the interview was him and Claudia Gonson realising they’ve been playing Papa Was A Rodeo incorrectly for the last decade. (Thanks to Paul)

Humble Uker has more animated uke videos with this clip from Phineas and Ferb being the standout.

In the comments: A while back I took down Bess Rogers’s’s I Don’t Worry when it was made available (legit-style) on Abatabs. Since then it’s provoked a couple of negative comments.

I’m a bit ambivalent on the subject. I certainly support artists making money from their work. It’s my policy not to put anything up when there are official uke tabs available. (It helps that they were nice about it and didn’t threaten to send in the lawyers). Also, I’d like to see sites with official tabs on the net. There needs to be an iTunes for tabs. But there isn’t really anything like that for guitar so a uke site like that is a long way off.

On the other hand, I do think you can build up a big fanbase through teaching. Aldrine’s certainly won a big audience on the back of teaching on Ukulele Underground.

One issue I’m not ambivalent on: 95 years is a ridiculously lengthy term for copyright and absolutely has a negative impact on culture. The Economist, those famously anti-business hippies, suggest 14 years is more sensible.

I’ve had this one knocking around, half finished for years. The version I’ve ended up with diverges from the original quite significantly. As well as being shorter, the fast section is completely different in terms of notes.

The most important thing is to vary the tone between the guitar and the banjo – otherwise it’s not a duel you’ll just playing the same thing twice. There are a bunch of ways you can separate the two. For the city guitar I’ve played open strings wherever possible and picked and strummed mostly with my thumb around the start of the fretboard. For the rusty, backwoods banjo I’ve used more fretted notes and picked/strummed with my finger near the bridge.

Jim Beloff’s The Ukulele: A Visual History must be the longest surviving ukulele book in my collection. Others have been discarded as useless or had the info sucked out of them and left in a draw. So it’s about time I got round to giving it a review.

What You Get

125 very heavily illustrated pages.

Chapters:

History of the Ukulele
The Great Players and Personalities
The Great Ukulele Manufacturers
The Story Continues…

The review is for the 2nd Edition of the book.

The Good Stuff

Ultimate in uke pr0n – The book is jam packed with ukulele pictures (and ukulele-related pictures and sheet music covers). There’s a huge amount of fabulous stuff to look at. Some of my personal favourites:

– The most stunning Santo ukulele I have ever seen.
– Hank’s Eukadidles for the Ukulele
– Ancil Swagerty being the chicest geek on the beach.
– A 1993 UOGB grinning like kids’ TV presenters.

It’s made to be flicked through and stared at. And doing so is a real treat (this review has taken 10 times longer than necessary to write because of the amount of aimless perusing I’ve done).

Useful reference – I’ve regularly picked up the book to check a date, name or to to answer, “Where have I seen that uke before?” niggles. While it’s not designed as a reference book, I don’t think there’s anything out there that does a better job of it than this.

And, refreshingly, it has a section on the ukulele in Japan.

Coffee-table/toilet-side book – It’s heavily diverting and not at all taxing – making it perfect for those occasions when things are either going into or coming out of your body.

The Not So Good Stuff

Busy Backgrounds – I found it hard to concentrate on reading the book. There’s a lot going on visually and the backgrounds – sometimes photographs – make it tricky to read. Partly because of this (and partly because of the way the book is structured) I don’t think I’ve ever sat down and actually read it for a significant period of time.

Due For A New Edition – A lot has happened since the 2nd edition came out in 2003. The book is definitely deserving of an update and it feels like the right time for one.

Overall

If my copy was lost, eaten by mice or combusted on a bonfire of the vanities, I’d buy a new copy straight away. Definitely worth a buy if you’re interested in ukes (and I’m guessing you are).

The Ukulele: A Visual History on Amazon

It was the anniversary of John Peel’s death yesterday. I was going to put up Napalm Death’s You Suffer in tribute. But after getting hate mail for my Dillinger Escape Plan post, I thought I’d go with something a bit more crowd pleasing.

For this version I’ve written up the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain version (from Anarchy in the UK).

Suggested Strumming

For C and Am you can go with:

d – d u d u d u
d – d u d u

Topped off with one down strum for the Cmaj7 passing chord.

d – d u d u d u

In the verse you can use this twice for each chord.

Twiddly Bits

The intro/solo riff goes a bit like this:

The rest of the solo you can noodle around with C major pentatonic.

Undertones Version

The Undertones version is two frets higher (so the chords are D – Dmaj7 – Bm and G – A).

They also have another passing chord between G and A (G#). If you want to throw it in the UOGB version, it’s F# (easiest to play it x121).

I’ve been getting a lot of comments from people complaining about the endless stream of songs I feature about Ukrainian constitutional reform. I don’t want this blog to become musically 1 dimensional so, with deep apologies to those of working on snappy rhymes for Leonid Kuchma and fitting Law No. 2222-IV into pleasant scansion, this week’s song from Eugen will be the last I feature.

Also this week krabbers is in a similarly East European protest mood, Mad Tea Party railing against name-thieves, Andrew Vincent covers Daughtry to great advantage, Herman and Paulien remind me of when the Super Furry Animals were fabulous and Misty Miller (who has been causing a bit of stir down London way but I haven’t been entirely convinced by).

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An interesting article about ukulele sales talking to a number of sellers (via Arch on the Cosmos). Despite a few clangers (Kamaka was established in nineteen-sixTEEN rather than nineteen-sixTY, and there’s still no ukulele in I’m Yours) it’s well worth a read through.

It’s a long article so here are a few quotes:

Sammy Ash from Sam Ash:

It’s an interesting business to watch, because it seems like whenever we add another line, it just adds more sales. One new line doesn’t seem to be taking sales away from another. That’s always a fear – if you have eight lines of guitars and you add one, you’re not selling more guitars you’re just selling less of one of the ones you already carry.

Peter Dods of Easy Music:

“They are an easy upsell. The cheaper ukes sound… well, cheap. Up from the $30 ones to over $100, the sound is noticeably different. Above $200, it’s dramatically different.

It seems like Kala are outstripping Lanikai these days. Myrna Sislen of Middle C music:

I’m excited about Kala because they make a perfectly fine uke at a reasonable price… I love dealing with Kala – they treat their dealers very well. In the rare instance there is a problem, they make it right.

Ash again:

“We’ll see two more years of growth, but now what we’re seeing is that so many manufacturers are jumping in… If you would have tried to tell me I’d be having this conversation five years ago… But there’s no store that is lacking in uke sales.

Sislen:

the uke market is growing rather than leveling – I’m selling more every month, so I would guess the market hasn’t peaked yet. I’m happy!

In other matters, this week’s ukulele photos: children’s ukulele band, goofy guy, ukulele girlfriends in a boat.