Brianna Laugher wrote:
Their C&D letter (
http://imslpforums.org/viewtopic.php?t=615 )
mentions specifically the following artists, and I copied their death
years from Wikipedia:
B Bartok d. 1945
I Friedman d. 1948
J Marx d. 1964
A Schonberg d. 1951
R Strauss d. 1949
A von Zemlinski d. 1942
G Mahler d. 1911
L Janacek d. 1928
A Berg d. 1935
O Respighi d. 1936
K Szymanowski d. 1937 (well, in a few months)
So it seems we should have no problem to host around half of these works.
At first glance all of these people would normally be in the public
domain in Canada except Marx, assuming that there is only one J. Marx.
(Groucho Marx died in 1977, and did write some songs. His legal name
was Julius. :-) )
The letter says, "As you are aware, [Europe has
copyright author death
+70, Canada has author death + 50]. Certain of these composers' works
are further protected in Canada or the United States under the
appropriate /Copyright Act/ of these jurisdictions."
Further protected, what are they talking about? Any ideas?
No. If they are making such a claim it's up to them to provide a basis
for it - perhaps a section of the Copyright Act.
An amusing sentence in the letter is "It is our understanding that it is
possible to filter IP addresses of those who take part in copying files
from your site to prevent such unauthorized copyright infringement." If
these lawyers believe that Canadian copyright law is being infringed why
are they talking about filters?
The expression "we reserve our client's rights" doesn't really mean that
they will do anything. Beginning a court action in Europe is
conceivable, but there is no mechanism for enforcing the decision in
Canada when the actions would not be illegal in Canada. Canada does
have laws for the reciprocal enforcement of court orders, but these are
a matter of provincial jurisdiction, and they appear limited to very
specific circumstances covering such things as commercial debt and child
support.
Intimidation letters like this can be very effective against people who
are naïve about the law. A person running a one man operation is
especially vulnerable to these tactics. The optimum would be to push
back against such actions that are based on questionable abuses of law.
Until people have the guts to do that these tactics will not stop.
Ec