Universal Edition to IMSLP …
p2pnet news | Music:- Yesterday, p2pnet posted:
A small Canadian website offering sheet music mainly from dead composers has been forced offline. The IMSLP (International Music Score Library Project) is a wiki-based library of public domain sheet music. Or, rather, it was because sadly, it is no more.
Feldmahler, its ex-project leader, received a Cease & Desist letter, but not from a Canadian law firm. Instead, it was from Germany’s Universal Edition.
Actually, the company is Austrian, not German. Our mistake.
Following Jonathan Irons’s Reader’s Write, here’s what the company says in its own defence >>>
Dear fellow musicians,
we have followed the discussion here very closely following the regrettable decision taken by the IMSLP to close down its site. It’s very easy to present a case of ‘big corporation stamps on small good guys’, but that is unfortunately not the whole story.
Let’s make a few things clear, as a considerable amount of this discussion is based on misunderstandings and the fact that the IMSLP has deliberately decided to withhold part of the story from you – I wonder why…
1. UE did not close down the site. UE merely requested that a limited number of works be removed. There was absolutely no reason whatsoever to take the site down. As the former CEO of a website legally distributing over 15,000 sheet music titles from over 200 suppliers, I am most perplexed as to why this decision was taken.
2. UE most certainly made repeated polite and direct attempts to discuss in an amiable manner the copyright infringements taking place on the site. IMSLP has deliberately decided not to show you this correspondence, in the (successful) attempt to give the impression that UE was not prepared to enter into a dialogue and to resolve the issue in a friendly manner.
3. The arguments presented to us by IMSLP basically amount to a rejection of existing copyright laws in a number of countries. Discussion of international law is by all means welcome and can be very interesting, but you can’t just tell a traffic cop that you don’t like the speed restrictions on the highway because another country has different rules.
4. UE has no problem whatsoever with Canadian users in Canada downloading music which is public domain in Canada. We have repeatedly said this – but this information has been deliberately withheld from you.
So here’s our polite and sincere request to the providers of the innovative and interesting IMSLP project:
Please restart your servers! Please install a simple IP-geolocation software which will block European users from downloading copyright material. If you do not know how to do this, you should not be running an internationally accessible website containing material which by your own admission may be copyright protected. By punishing your own serious and honest users from accessing this impressive collection of public domain material, you are merely trying to divert attention from the very few copyright violations which deserve serious attention. This massive overreaction leads one to believe that there may in fact be other reasons for shutting down the server, and UE is being used as a scapegoat.
And finally, UE is not some impersonal corporation. We are real people who work hard to make good music available. If you have a complaint to make, please do so in writing to music@universaledition.com. We don’t hide behind nicknames, and will reply to every message that doesn’t question our parentage or sexuality.
Music is too important to be squabbled about!
UPDATE:
Also see Geist, Knopf and Universal Edition
Stay tuned.
Also See:
p2pnet – Universal Edition forces IMSLP offline, October 22, 2007
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October 23rd, 2007 at 8:42 am
Of course they should remove content from dead composers.
How else are they supposed to protect the rights of the artists?
October 23rd, 2007 at 9:14 am
It still doesn’t make sense to me. Why is it the responsibility of the website owner to block access from certain countries? The people in those countries should be responsible for their own actions right? He’s not making them visit the site or break any laws, they do so on their own.
Confusing.
October 23rd, 2007 at 9:47 am
In this days of copyright extremism and corruption of our governements and as far as I am concerned if anyone, I mean anyone send me a cease and desist letter they will got what they deserve: bullets!
Not only I will not shut down my site but I will proliferate the stuff that they say is infringing all over the net and elswhere for one thing. Not only that but I will take all the stuff from the party who is complaining and weither their copyrigh is valid or not and I will spread it on line as wildly as I can. I will show them what is copyright infringement!
And if they continue to bother me me and not only me but my friends also will escalate this viciously.
October 23rd, 2007 at 9:52 am
Another company trying to make them selfs look good so all consumers don’t start ignoring them. It is still the big money hungry corporations enforcing retarded copy right laws. Sheet music what a joke! Sheet music should have no copyright. People use it to play for their own enjoyment whether the artist is alive or dead. But F^%$ed up corporations like this only want people to enjoy themselves and increase their talent base if they get lots of money so they can get their 4th Mercedes. I hope my daughters guitar instructor paid these greedy a$$ed bastards for the stuff he is teaching her with. I would hate to thing he would be sued for giving a kid enjoyment and a chance to learn how to play guitar. I also hope I never meet any of these people because I would be going to jail for kicking the crap out of them.
October 23rd, 2007 at 10:38 pm
It is sad to see another site bite the dirt. Somewhere this insanity has lead to even sheet music, where one makes their own music, not listening to recorded music mind you, is even under the outrageous copyright limits. Limits that do nothing for helping create but rather hold it back, ensuring that a new generation will not learn how to play without giving their pound of flesh to the corporations.
While employees within a corporation might be human, the corporation itself which is responcible for the action has no soul and suffers not the pains of human existance. I see the actions of such corporations as being representive of it’s employees. It is by the employess suggestions and actions that these sort of instanities come about. So while there may be a pleading to treat the employees as someone, I see them as a faceless represention of all that is wrong with corporate welfare.
So yes, you deserve every bit of the scorn the public will heap upon you for the jobs you do. Don’t like that scorn? Tough luck, find a new job. Other corporations ahead of you have seen to it that this sort of action is felt as an extreme ill will towards both the corporation and its employees.
No I’m not talking here of violence. I’m talking instead of hitting you where it hurts the most, denial of funds and ill will in return that you so richly deserve.
You expect some other country to obey your laws? So what say we go driving by the German hospitals honking horns as they do in India? Germany is well known for wanting quiet around the hospitals isn’t it?
Well you’ve made your target one that can’t fight back and can not change the laws. For that you get all the scorn I can possiblity dish out to you. You are a sign of exactly what is wrong with the world today and you recieve no sympathy from me other than to wish you an early bankrupacy. You will then face the idea of it is job hunting time. Till then, the best of ill will.
October 24th, 2007 at 9:15 pm
This is stupid. Now you don’t even need to be in someone else’s country to be subject to someone else’s laws.