In the News
Plaudits Don't Pay Bills
Jul, 10 2010
Musical theater composer Jason Robert Brown was so disappointed to find thousands of copies of his sheet music on an internet filesharing site that he took the issue into his own hands: he registered on the site and sent e-mails to about 400 users who were illegally sharing his work, politely introducing himself and asking them to stop.
Brown, who won a Tony Award for his score to the Broadway show Parade, was pleased that the majority of users immediately stopped sharing his scores, though some asked for clarification of his identity first. But one teenage user called Eleanor fought back, and Brown has now published their lengthy debate on his blog.
It's provoked another round of debate about the rights or wrongs of filesharing, but this time from a slightly different angle: it's not about music recordings, but sheet music. Filesharing might seem easier to justify if every musician is imagined to be a Cribs-starring spendthrift, but that's only a tiny percentage of all musicians. Jason Robert Brown is highly acclaimed as a theater composer, but plaudits don't pay bills.
