Provider of Free Public Domain Music Shuts Down 242
Mark Rogers writes "The International Music Score Library Project has provided access to copies of many musical scores that are in the public domain. It has just been shut down due to a cease-and-desist letter sent to the site operator by a European Union music publisher (Universal Edition). A majority of the scores recently available at IMSLP were in the public domain worldwide. Other scores were not in the public domain in the United States or the EU (where copyright extends for 70 years after the composer's death), but were legal in Canada (where the site is hosted) and many other countries. The site's maintainers clearly labeled the copyright status of such scores and warned users to follow their respective country's copyright law. Apparently this wasn't enough for Universal Edition, who found it necessary to protect the interests of their (long-dead) composers and shut down a site that has proved useful to many students, professors, and other musicians worldwide."
Prior Art (Score:3, Interesting)
They are suing for 12 sequence notes these days- I think it is likely that many 12 sequence notes are already public domain. All it needs is some computer crunching between still copyrighted songs and public domain songs to compare them.
Time to change copyright ... (Score:3, Interesting)
"where copyright extends for 70 years after the composer's death"
How could the EU shut down a Canadian company? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Why take the site down? (Score:3, Interesting)
Reasons:
1. If they don't act immediately, it could be argued later in court they acted in bad faith delaying taking down the offending materials. The site will be off temporarily until all offending material is removed, and then put back up.
2. The site owner(s) is/are understandably pissed off, and taking the entire site off allows them for better publicity and press coverage. It's a statement of a sort.
Re:Prior Art (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Not again.... (Score:3, Interesting)
they are suing that the scores are copyrighted
for 70 years after the authors death in Europe and 50 in Canada,
that he is responsible for any infringement because he the admin, that because it's possible to implement a IP address filtering system to restrict access to persons based on their countries of origin, he responsible to do so in order to restrict access based on the country of origin's laws and that they are going to sue him in Europe and Canada will enforce any judgments.
Maybe they should move the operation to Russia where there is still a chance to be free of being bullied by a foreign country's laws. Boy that's sad, moving to Russia for freedom, who would have though.
Re:Make copyright the same as perpetuities. (Score:3, Interesting)
Somehow, though, we've never viewed Copyright in this same light
Copyright originated from this manner of thinking. May I suggest you read this paper [ssrn.com] about the origins of copyright, particularly in the US. I enjoyed it a lot. I would also fight very hard against life+18. For some works, 15 years is far too long. A modest quantity of very short terms (e.g. 1-2 year terms which at most might be renewable up to a total of 20 years, and in some cases much less) strikes me as better given how the economics of creative works actually plays out.
Re:Prior Art (Score:2, Interesting)
Unfortunately I can't find a citation for that
As a music student... (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, what motive is there for this website to be shut down? These music publishers probably make a good deal of money on BEGINNER type music books, but how many people actually advance to a level where they could play original scores? I am just guessing, but there are probably less then a few thousand people on this earth that can play Rachmaninoff #3. And the ones that master it probably have hand-written notes all over there copy that they made while learning it. For myself, after looking at a score online to asses the difficulty, I typically find a for-pay copy that has good recommended fingering and notes on how to play it, things that original scores don't often have.
For full orchestra scores, there are not that many people other than music students and professional musicians who would ever have a need to look at one. So why bother taking a website like this down?
Re:I feel better about this decision... (Score:3, Interesting)
Copyright duration really needs to be chopped down to 10 years, with a total maximum of 15 possible after a 5-year extension. NO copyright at all would be a hundred times better than the crap we have now.
Re:Not again.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes. And no. Copyright harmonization between countries is always done in such a way that you still have something to harmonize towards. A harmonization round, at least in the perverted minds of the likes of WIPO and the large publishers, should always overshoot a little.
To give you an example: recently (late 1990s?) the US harmonized its copyright laws so that they were more like those of the EU. The result of this was for instance that recording rights last 90 years in the US; far more than in the EU. So recently organizations in the UK (which is still part of the EU) started lobbying for harmonizing recording rights terms with those of the US, even if those in the US were the result of a round of changes that was supposed to harmonize US copyright law with those of the EU.
a day late and a dollar short (Score:2, Interesting)
It is unfortunate that I had not heard about this site until it made slashdot news.