The Facts About Music Forgery

Forgery is not limited to the unlawful fabrication of documents, money, literary pieces, and works of art. Music is another form of media that can be forged. Forgery in music has a long history of music scores that are said to be authored completely by one composer, but in reality written by a forger. The mystery of who finished Mozart's Requiem is still a topic of heated debate among musicologists. The great composer had died before he was able to finish his final masterpiece. No composer wished to reveal himself to the public although it is clear that Constanze, Mozart's widow, needed to have the final score completed to pay off the debts of her late husband. Therefore, there was clearly a need to have the score finished. The composer or composers who finished Mozart's Requiem Mass would have never been liable of breaking music copyright law during the 18th Century as such laws did not exist. The truth of the finishing of Mozart's Requiem Mass cannot be determined because the composer who had finished the masterpiece was very skilled in mimicking Mozart's handwriting and signature. If modern music copyright laws existed at the time, this question of music history would no longer be a topic of dispute between music historians. Regardless, the Requiem Mass is one of Mozart's greatest contributions to the art of music. Centuries have passed since Mozart lived and died, and in modern times, music scores and recorded music are protected by music copyright laws. Copyright infringement is the unauthorized use of a piece of copyrighted material. Copyrighted material is the intellectual property of the composer, artist, publishing company, and record company who helped to create a song. The modern music industry is a large industry in which large sums of money are invested in the production of music for public consumption. The rights to property and money gained as a result of music production are the essence of copyright infringement laws. The music industry is quite aggressive in its persecution of persons who commit copyright infringement against the industry. Historically, the record industry has had a monopoly on the way people listen to music. In the 1980s, there was much controversy in the music industry over the use of recordable audio cassettes to record music from the radio or compact disk. Congress finally legalized the use of blank audio cassettes for the recording and duplication of music and other copyrighted materials for personal, non-commercial use in 1992. Consumers were free to transfer their music and record their recorded music without being criminally or civilly liable of copyright infringement. The Federal law was known as the Audio Home Recording Act. The law also gave consumers the liberty of recording television shows or movies with their VCRs provided that they do not sell it or distribute it. As the 1990s progressed into the 2000s, the types of media became more sophisticated with the growing popularity of digital media. Hip-hop grew from an urban underground phenomenon to an international American pop cultural export. Many hip-hop artists use short sequences of existing music as a means of making a hip-hop beat. This practice is known as sampling. Sampling is a creative innovation of music previously unavailable because previous technology was not advanced enough. Sampling in hip-hop challenged existing music copyright law because it takes other pieces of copyrighted work for the purpose of creating an original piece of music. The legality of sampling is a topic of debate. However, most proponents point to the "fair use doctrine" as an argument for sampling's legality. The "fair use doctrine" considers the amount of the copyrighted work used in relation to the new publication as a whole. The music copyright violation must be significant before there are grounds for civil litigation. Therefore, most hip-hop beat producers may sample copyrighted material as long as it is no longer than 10 seconds in duration. Street vendors selling illegally duplicated music became a common presence on streets of the world's cities. This activity is obviously in violation of music copyright law because it specifically involves the duplication of copyrighted material for the purpose of selling it. Person to Person (P2P) file "sharing" applications like Napster became popular among Internet users at the beginning of the 21st century. The laws challenged existing copyright infringement laws because it technically was not selling the music, it was sharing the music. Music copyright law stipulates that a person not distribute copyrighted music for commercial purposes. The central legal argument Napster's lawyers used was that Person-to-Person applications were sharing and not distributing. The first complainants in civil disputes against Napster were the heavy metal band, Metallica. Metallica's lawyers argued that Napster, by virtue of it being a commercial corporation, was distributing digital music for the sake of profit. The complainants won the trial and it set the precedent that digital file sharing is a mild form of copyright infringement punishable by law. Federal law prohibits file sharing. It is a crime punishable up to 5 years in prison and fines up to $250,000. Civil penalties depend on how much a record company or music artist wants from the the copyright violator. Modern file sharing applications like Bit Torrent make file sharing much faster with their partial file sharing systems that constitute indirect file transfers. A piece of all the members’ files are shared simultaneously and sent to the person downloading the torrent file. In the age of broadband internet connections, this is the fastest method of illegal downloading. The Sweden-based website, The Pirate Bay, had charges brought against them by the intellectual property defenders. It is established that there is not any type of file sharing application that is void of criminal liability. However, the public popularity of such sites spawned a new political party in Swedish politics whose platform is based on the free flow of information sharing regardless of copyright. These anti-intellectual property activists are a clear indication that the controversy surrounding music copyright law is here to stay. File sharing is a global phenomenon and there are few people who do not have a strong opinion either for or against the enforcement of copyright infringement. The debate over music copyright law is not going to conclude in the near future. Many music artists have adapted to historically low music sales by focusing more on their live shows. Some artists even encourage the rapid spread of their recorded material. The band Pearl Jam is well-known for allowing their fans to video record their live performances.