by Dean FH Macy, Lit.D.

POSTED 9 JUNE "There are only a few simple problems here, the main one being that 99% of the people in the world do not know what a midi file is, and about 80% of them don't care. Not even HFA personel know what a midi file is. When I called HFA and asked several officers who regulate mechanical licensing what a midi file is they all tell me that it's like a CD or a Wave file; a digital audio file. NOT! All the noise on the web is about midi files and the licensing of them as sound recordings or copyrighting them. We tried to copyright one. My company sent a diskette of a midi file to the US Copyright offices. It was returned with a nice letter saying that this file we sent cannot be copyrighted. They said if we put it on a CDR it could be copyrighted. But if we recorded the data output from the sequencer to a CDR it would no longer be a midi file. It would be a sound recording; a digital audio file. The HFA is trying to convince people that a midi file is the same as a sound recording or digital recording. It is not and never will be. It's a data file. It contains no audio and no music notation and it does not contain printable sheet music. I wonder who started this fable? I know that midi is a data formula for a fact because it was partly my baby. As the sixties roared to life I was at Columbia University earning my degree in music. I was assigned to work at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center where we, using transformers and miscellanous electric parts, chokes, vacuum tubes, etc. worked at rendering a complete ballet musical score with, what we called it at that time, electronic music. We had in our lab two Ampex two inch, eight track recorders upon which we would record tracks from the "homebrew" oscillators. We then would speed up and slow down the tape to create changes in pitch which we would record onto the second Ampex. It was a tedious job and took nearly a year to complete. However, our work was not in vain. The (I believe) NYC Ballet performed the ballet at Columbia. It was the first ballet ever performed to electronic music. I remember one visit Robert Moog made to the center. He looked at our makeshift cluster of electronic equipment and said someting to the effect of there's got to be a better way. I remember his discussing an idea of improving on our clutter of electronics, using vacuum tube oscillators and adding a keyboard similar to a piano keyboard. It was a dream of his, to manufacture an electronic synthesizer to enable musicians to create sounds in a way much more simplified than we did for the Ballet. In my work with Robert Moog and later on in the seventies with keyboard/Moog musicians I helped devise the first data stream which enabled Moog players to upload their data to a computer for storage which they could later retrieve and modify. After computer chips became available for Moog and other synthesizers we then discovered that we could send this data stream between synth from varying manufacturers, however it was cumbersome because each synth had it's own sound controls. We had to devise a map which enabled musicians to "force" controls over to different instruments. Finally, in the early eighties a group of musicians, now called the MMA, came up with a standard midi format or now called SMF. Someone is trying to tell us that midi files are sound recordings and can be copyrighted and licensed. It is just not true. Another big problem is the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) which dissolves all justice and rights of the American citizen that is guaranteed under the Constitution. It allows a single accusation to destroy a business or a web site. All anyone has to do to shut down a web site is write an accusation against the site owner and the ISP is forced by the DMCA to terminate the website. There is no investigation, no notice, nothing. A pointing finger means guilt. If the finger points the webmaster is guilty. He can't even protest or appeal because there is no provision in the DMCA for due process of law. Indeed, there is no law. We, as American citizens won't stand for this off the web. Why must we stand for this on the web? The third problem is the trading of midi files across net boundries. HFA, who has nothing whatsoever to do with this is having ISP's shut down sites. HFA is the enforcer of mechanical licensing of sound recordings affixed in a tangable medium, i.e., CD's, Phonorecords, Cassettes, etc. They have no rights of juristiction over data files, yet they have taken it into their hand and are now making law where no law exists and enforcing their law by destroying websites. They are the despot, the unrighteous King. The reason for midi was to freely exchange musical ideas, just as writers exchange, via word processing, writing ideas. When some company excerts and demands power over the midi data stream, how long will it be before they try to control WP files? God help us if we allow them to win!"

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