[supercat]

Downloading songs may be theft, not copyright violation, unless the downloader repackages and sells the song as the downloader's own. Downloading songs should be under theft crimes, not copyright crimes.

I wonder what the Founding Fathers would have thought of the notion that a restauranteur has to pay for permission to sing songs for guests, even when no transcription of the music is involved.

[bvw]

They would have thought copyright applied to such stuff, ridiculous. They really did have music back then -- they had music and music publishing. The publishing -- the printing of a JS Bach sonata was a "Useful Art", but its composition was not. In otherwords the Founders would have been excedingly UNLIKELY to recoginize a transcription by ear and memory to paper, instrument or voice as covered by COPYRIGHT.

That is a published sheet of music could have been copyrighted -- the MUSIC itself could not have been copyrighted. The printing, the packaging, was the "Useful Art", the music was not.