p2pnet - rss feed: IMSLP re-starts on July 1
p2pnet news | Music:- Canadian online Wiki library site IMSLP was offering sheet music mainly from dead composers until it was forced offline by Austrian company Universal Edition
Now, however, IMSLP is reporting it’ll be business as (was) usual starting July 1.
“The International Music Score Library Project was a repository of more than 15,000 musical scores that are in the public domain here in Canada,” it says, going on it had to close down, “after receiving lawsuit threats from music publishers that do not want the public domain to exist”.
“The immediate threat was from Universal Edition, a publisher in Austria,” it says, going on:
“Whereas copyright in Canada lasts until 50 years after the author’s death, copyright in Austria lasts 20 years longer. Universal Edition threatened to sue me, perhaps in Canada or perhaps in Austria, for violating Austrian law.
“There is no reason why Austrian law should apply to this site in Canada, but as a student I did not have the resources to resist even an absurd threat from a company with money to pay lawyers to attack music.”
IMSLP was launched on February 16, 2006, says the Wikipedia, continuing:
“The library consisted mainly of scans of old musical editions out of copyright. In addition, it admitted scores by contemporary composers who wished to share their music with the world by releasing it under a Creative Commons license. One of the main projects of IMSLP was the sorting and uploading of the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach in the Bach-Gesellschaft Ausgabe (1851-1899). Besides J.S. Bach’s, Frédéric Chopin’s nearly complete oeuvre was available on IMSLP.
“Besides providing a digital repository, IMSLP offered possibilities as a musicological encyclopaedia, since multiple and historical editions of a single composition could be uploaded, and musicological analyses and historical commentaries accompany the scores.”
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.Stumble It!
forced offline - Universal Edition to IMSLP …, October 23, 2007
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May 22nd, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Ok, so licensing in Canada the public domain work of a composer wo died over 50 years ago is fraud.
Is anyone counting the frauds or doing anything about the frauds?
Where are the copyright cops when the criminals are big music publishers who peddle public doamin works?
Is Mickey Mouse licensed in Canada? It is fraud, a crime.
May 22nd, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Dead composers. Now quietly decomposing? Pity Boathaven can’t come back to sue isn’t it? The cartels will do it FOR him. Or rather, for themselves. What gives them the right? Nothing. Did he have a contract with them? It’s ok for them to steal his work and profit by it, but to then claim copyright? That’s absurd. They can claim copyright on a derivative work only, since these excomposers are not around to defend themselves. Even if they were, the cartels would steal it from under their noses, and sue them if they chose not to contract with them.
May 23rd, 2008 at 4:27 am
Don Kee Says:
“What gives them the right? Nothing.”
“They can claim copyright on a derivative work only,”
Don is right. But the lawa ae wrong. Derivative works (for example, a recording of Chopin by pianist X) should also be at the outset in the public domain. The reasoning is simple: If derivative works are not in the public domain, then nothing is in de facto public domain, and pianist X (or his/her record company) owns de facto the work by Chopin.
The idea of public domain exists because the laws limit copyright duration, but the idea is defeated by the idea that derivative works of public domain works are not themselves in the public domain.
Who is fooling who?
May 23rd, 2008 at 10:17 am
As the owner of copyrighted works I can forbid derivative works (NC, ND) and I do so to prevent some parasites from the majors to claim copyright on my stuff.