Heya 'gal - brief answer:

Your *ideas* aren't protectible under copyright - recorded, printed, tangible stuff is.

And, more bad news - even if somebody did steal your intellectual property, it's hard to get that taken care of. It's hard to prove infringement in court, and even harder to get a lot of money for it. Your legal fees will exceed what you get - unless you're in the same league as The Beatles. (Not saying that you have less talent than they have - but as far as I know, you're not quite as famous yet ;-)))

To make matters worse - if e.g. somebody copies your CD and sells it on Ebay from out of China, where copyright is handles differently, you're out of luck as well.

Sorry for the downer on enforcement.

Don't know much about what and how exactly copyright w/ music works. I know that choreographies have to be written down (in a way that others have a chance to understand), I think one can also videotape, and then one can claim copyright for choreography, because it is "made tangible".

Does that help any?

Cheers -- S.

You go girl...
Copyright is a legal distinction. Whereas, taking someone's idea, claiming that which was the fruit of someone else's creative invention, is evil, wrong, rude, unacceptable, cannot be tolerated, must be stamped out, ripped out by it's very roots and flung to the deepest crack in the darkest dung heap, scourged from the bowels of existance, etc, etc, etc.

So you might think that I have an opinion of this subject. You'd be right. Not necessarily because it has happened to me, but I have known people that it has happened to and.........it has happened to me.

"Die you gravy-sucking pig." Oh, did I say that? Well, I thought I got over that one. I guess that I didn't. Macht nicht!

Oh, hi Mab...good topic. Important for all of us to pay close attention to. We are part of a community. Besides the legal crap that we have to go through to protect ourselves so that we can continue to work in a profession that we so dearly love, there is a ethical or moral issue here, as well.

Ethically, it just not right to take someone's idea and commit fraud. Not only in the legal sense, but in the sense that it is an act against the community, as a whole. It shows total disrespect for us as artists. If someone can steal our ideas, what will they try to take from us next?

Morally, not because God will Smite us down, but because it shows contempt for the arts community and the creative process. It also shows to all of us that whoever would do such a thing can not be trusted and will no longer be welcome. One the surface it may not seem like much, but in the greater scheme of things, karma has a wonderful way of biting those worthy souls right where it counts.

Please don't misunderstand me, I do not wish anyone harm, but I do wish them to leave, disappear, cease to exist, be as if they have never been born, etc, etc, etc.

Have a nice day.

Sorry so long winded, as well. See Mab, you got me all talkative. Your fault, your fault..."Danger will Robinson, danger!!!!"

Daveed

Hi everyone!
Mab this is an awesome thought provoking issue. This one has lots of cortex to chew on.

Daveed makes some really good points, alot I'd agree upon...but let me play devil's advocate for just a moment.
What happens when the "idea" is maybe a dance movement. Let's use something really new and inovative. I'm going to use the example of Rachel Brice's well known backbend (standing deep backbend with the twist to the side) She's the creator of it and it's her intellectual propertity, I'd argue. She teaches folks how to do it in workshops. So if you've been taught to do it by her, I'd think that all would agree that you can do it.

Now we start to get into what I'd call all the shades of gray. What about the dancers who do the backbend, but figured it out on their own from seeing it? What about the dancers who figured it out and teaches another to do it. Now what if they charge $ for others to learn it?
Now what about the dancers who dress stylistically like Rachel and then do all her moves? What if they do this and then make a video and sell it?

I'd argue that some of these are "ugger" than others. At least some seem worse to me than others. Shades of gray until it becomes truely black, I'd say. It's surprising though, that when you talk to the people that are doing the really uggee things, they really feel that they are honoring the orginators.
We(khafif) once had another troupe perform our chorgraphy to a recording of one of our songs. It would have been cool, if we had autually taught the dance to them. They told us that they learned it off of a video tape of us. They were so excited and happy when they came off stage, and couldn't wait to hear what the members of Khafif who were at the event thought. They truely weren't evil people and had good intentions, but they just didn't think about the ramifications of their actions. I wonder to this day if there aren't people out there who think that khafif has copied their troupe.

All of this, I know isn't much help, but I don't think that there are any hard and fast ansewers. It's always going to be a judgement call, and one of the hardest things to get people to learn is good judgement. The people who really need to question themselves are the least likely to read this post. I'm preaching to the choir of considerate and ethical folks. For me I would say that if it feels "uggee" then your doing something wrong. But the problem is that some people's "uggee" buttons are broken.
Neefa