Curses! LJ ate my comment, even though I put it on the clipboard! Let's see if I can reproduce it.
I think that books are different from songs. A novel is a story told in exactly chosen words. Copyright covers the exact reproduction of those words. (It is a lot more fuzzy on fanfic (i.e. taking characters or situations created by the author, and exploring them in your own way.) It certainly doesn't cover someone recounting the whole plot of the novel to their friend.)
Songs have a sort of double existence, at least with today's pop music. There is the song itself (a line of melody with attached words), and there is the specific recording of that song, complete with arrangement etc. Should a different law cover someone using an actual recording without permission, and someone interpreting the song in their own way, singing it with two friends in a pub? Unlike novels, songs positively invite people to interpret them in their own way. You can learn a song in minutes, and sing it in the shower; you can't do the same to novels. People do cover versions of songs, but you don't get cover versions of novels. A novel just is; a song is much more fluid.
I think there is a good argument for having a much looser concept on intellectual property over the song itself, than over the specific recording. After all, who are we hurting if we sit in a pub and sing Cumberland Gap? If anything, we're providing a free advert for the song, and encouraging people present to go out and buy a "best of Lonnie Donnegan" album. We've bought a good few CDs purely because they contain songs we've previously heard sung during informal singarounds.
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I think that books are different from songs. A novel is a story told in exactly chosen words. Copyright covers the exact reproduction of those words. (It is a lot more fuzzy on fanfic (i.e. taking characters or situations created by the author, and exploring them in your own way.) It certainly doesn't cover someone recounting the whole plot of the novel to their friend.)
Songs have a sort of double existence, at least with today's pop music. There is the song itself (a line of melody with attached words), and there is the specific recording of that song, complete with arrangement etc. Should a different law cover someone using an actual recording without permission, and someone interpreting the song in their own way, singing it with two friends in a pub? Unlike novels, songs positively invite people to interpret them in their own way. You can learn a song in minutes, and sing it in the shower; you can't do the same to novels. People do cover versions of songs, but you don't get cover versions of novels. A novel just is; a song is much more fluid.
I think there is a good argument for having a much looser concept on intellectual property over the song itself, than over the specific recording. After all, who are we hurting if we sit in a pub and sing Cumberland Gap? If anything, we're providing a free advert for the song, and encouraging people present to go out and buy a "best of Lonnie Donnegan" album. We've bought a good few CDs purely because they contain songs we've previously heard sung during informal singarounds.