"This website comprises hundreds of documents (texts, scores, audio and video files) associated with music copyright infringement cases in the United States from 1845 forward. These documents have been collected and edited by Charles Cronin, a librarian at Columbia Law School, who is also responsible for all commentary and analysis in this site. The Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning is providing ongoing assistance with the digitization and organization of the materials in this site.
The purpose of this project is to capitalize on the distributed nature of digital information systems to collect, organize and distribute graphic and audio materials associated with music copyright infringement cases in the United States from the middle of the nineteenth century on. This documentation, especially for cases over twenty-five years old, is difficult to obtain and has never before been systematically collected or published in print or electronic format. Our goal is to accumulate and publish a complete collection of music copyright infringement opinions, comments about the musical works they consider, and graphic and sound files of relevant portions of these works.
Plagiarism per se is not grounds for a tort claim; one sues for copyright infringement based on an alleged plagiarism. While many instances of plagiarism are not actionable under copyright law, we use this term because it has long been associated with the broad notions of wrongful appropriation and publication as one's own of another's expression that are at the heart of these music copyright disputes.
We hope too that this project will prompt inquiry into the question of how digital music technologies, notation software in particular, might be used effectively in analyzing and arguing music copyright infringement disputes."
Columbia Law Library Music Plagiarism Project
