Franz Liszt writes in his Myspace weblog:
"A great blow has been dealt against the world of music and of our common cultural heritage.
The International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) was a wonderful site for sharing public domain music scores. They had an encyclopaedic collection of scores which anyone could download as a .pdf file. The site was entirely free and run by people dedicated to the art of music.
Unfortunately the music publishers Universal Edition has threatened the site's creator with legal action if he does not "cease and desist" the site's activities. This has now happened. UE's threats appear to be based on rather spurious copyright grounds. The intention is not to protect artists' rights, but to stop people from accessing public domain materials.
Most artists have struggled terribly in life and die broke and young. Having ignored the artists during their lifetimes, publishers are then able to exploit their genius posthumously. Take poor old Franz Schubert, for instance.
UE's legal threat is a direct attack on our common musical heritage as well as on culture in general. I believe that these public domain works should be freely available to the public. For the most part, IMSLP made available sores by all the greats (including my humble self), most of whom have been long dead and are out of copyright.
There is a current trend for all our common cultural heritage to be "privatized" and exploited by private corporations for the sole purpose of making money. The idea that the works of Shakespeare, Beethoven and Leonardo da Vinci (et al) should "belong" to anyone except the people of this planet (and beyond) is outrageous.
Sadly, this trend is not restricted only to great works of art. Ancient buildings, national parks, libraries, museums, images of works art, and many aspects of our cultural heritage are all being devoured by private corporations in order to fuel the interests of a small minority of greedy individuals.
Be that as it may, I do urge you to go to the IMSLP forum, register. learn the facts and offer support (if only by adding your voice). This is important because this is about freedom, our common cutural heritage - and about music! [...]
The address is http://imslpforums.org "
Source: http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=11368418...
The cease and desist letter mentions EU-protected composers but also composers like Gustav Mahler who is dead since 1911.
There are two questions:
First: Can WMF help to re-activate IMSLP by hosting e.g. Wikiscore (or so)?
It is already possible to uload PD scores on Wikimedia Commons. See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Sheet_music
Second: Are there implications for WMF copyright policies?
The CaD-letter mentions the fact that "that under Canadian law a judgement rendered in Europe is enforceable in Canada". If a Canadian user uploads works on Commons from an US server like Internet Archive (pre-1923-rule) which are PD in Canada (50 y pma) then this is allowed by the (inappropriate) rule of Commons.
I have to quote the rule: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Licensing#Interaction_of_United_St...
"If material that has been saved from a third-party website is uploaded to Commons, the copyright laws of the US, the country of residence of the uploader, and the country of location of the webservers of the website apply."
It clearly lacks the COUNTRY OF ORIGIN in this (inappropriate) rule. If this country is a EU country the 70 year pma rule is in effect.
Take a Bela Bartok score published before 1923 (or 1909). Bartok died in 1945, his works are protected in all EU countries until December 31, 2015. The score is PD in the US and Canada but the Canadian uploader can be sued by a Canadian lawyer because the work is not free in Europe.
WMF cannot be sued for an US court in this case because the work is PD in the US.
But should'nt we protect the uploader when he is uploading according our rules?
Klaus Graf
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.
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?
cheers, Brianna
On 10/21/07, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote: [snip]
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?
There are special cases like Peter Pan in the UK some jurisdictions, so that could be part of it.. Also things like the WWII copyright extensions (i.e. Antoine de Saint-Exupery).
For sheet music, however, there are a lot of other minefields:
A *lot* of the scores out there are not verbatim duplicates of the authors' original works. Frequently you find transcriptions for different instruments, for example arranging a work written for orchestra for piano, or a brass ensemble or vice versa. These alterations are indisputably copyrightable just about anywhere. Also, the scores may enumerate various types of ornamentation or embellishment which the original author left to the the performers taste, in the world of sheet music these changes are also understood to be copyrightable. Finally, especially for some forms of music there are sometimes substantial parts the composer intentionally left out (i.e. cadenza in concerti) which are often written in sheet music, which are also certainly copyrightable.
In many cases the composer's original works (called urtext editions) can be very very hard to locate... and sometimes the urtext will still end up containing copyrightable cadenza(s). As a result there is probably a fair amount of truly old music which has fallen out of the public domain. :(
In addition to that mess the layout/typography of sheet much enjoys copyright in some jurisdictions... although these can be avoided by retranscribing the works... but for many kinds of music that can be a really substantial amount of work. (Too bad we don't have the WikiTeX sheet music extension...)
Most online sheet music sites have truly terrible copyright policies. Of all of them that I am aware of only Mutopia (http://www.mutopiaproject.org/) makes the kind of effort to validate the copyright status that we would be proud of.
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
On 10/21/07, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote: [snip]
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?
There are special cases like Peter Pan in the UK some jurisdictions, so that could be part of it.. Also things like the WWII copyright extensions (i.e. Antoine de Saint-Exupery).
The Peter Pan and King James Bible situations are just oddball, and we have not yet reached 70 years since Saint-Exupéry.
For sheet music, however, there are a lot of other minefields:
A *lot* of the scores out there are not verbatim duplicates of the authors' original works. Frequently you find transcriptions for different instruments, for example arranging a work written for orchestra for piano, or a brass ensemble or vice versa. These alterations are indisputably copyrightable just about anywhere. Also, the scores may enumerate various types of ornamentation or embellishment which the original author left to the the performers taste, in the world of sheet music these changes are also understood to be copyrightable. Finally, especially for some forms of music there are sometimes substantial parts the composer intentionally left out (i.e. cadenza in concerti) which are often written in sheet music, which are also certainly copyrightable.
Sure this would be essentially true, but with the material taken down any suggestion that these special situations would apply is nothing but speculation.
In many cases the composer's original works (called urtext editions) can be very very hard to locate... and sometimes the urtext will still end up containing copyrightable cadenza(s). As a result there is probably a fair amount of truly old music which has fallen out of the public domain. :(
These "copyrightable cadenzas" are severable. They do not in themselves cause the rest of the material to fall out of the public domain
In addition to that mess the layout/typography of sheet much enjoys copyright in some jurisdictions... although these can be avoided by retranscribing the works... but for many kinds of music that can be a really substantial amount of work. (Too bad we don't have the WikiTeX sheet music extension...)
Indeed, and that's the case for other non-musical works too. Until the United States abolished the need for a copyright notice, if the notice showed only the original copyright date, without any updates for the layout, etc. they could not make a case for that.
Ec
On 10/22/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
In addition to that mess the layout/typography of sheet much enjoys copyright in some jurisdictions... although these can be avoided by retranscribing the works... but for many kinds of music that can be a really substantial amount of work. (Too bad we don't have the WikiTeX sheet music extension...)
A purely electronic representation would be good since in many jurisdictions electronic representations, unlike physical representations, don't attract separate copyrights on the layout.
I note that on the IMSLP forums the suggestion has been raised by one of the site admins that since the project was getting too large for one person to handle anyway, another project like Gutenberg or Wikimedia might be able to take it over.
There have already been some efforts towards having more sheet music within Wikimedia projects, including a proposal for a separate sheet music project (though perhaps a different name would be appropriate):
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiScores
See also:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Music_markup
The music part of WikiTeX seems pretty good, it even generates midis along with the sheet music image!
http://wikisophia.org/wiki/Wikitex#Music
--- Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/22/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
In addition to that mess the layout/typography of
sheet much enjoys
copyright in some jurisdictions... although these
can be avoided by
retranscribing the works... but for many kinds of
music that can be a
really substantial amount of work. (Too bad we
don't have the WikiTeX
sheet music extension...)
A purely electronic representation would be good since in many jurisdictions electronic representations, unlike physical representations, don't attract separate copyrights on the layout.
I note that on the IMSLP forums the suggestion has been raised by one of the site admins that since the project was getting too large for one person to handle anyway, another project like Gutenberg or Wikimedia might be able to take it over.
There have already been some efforts towards having more sheet music within Wikimedia projects, including a proposal for a separate sheet music project (though perhaps a different name would be appropriate):
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiScores
See also:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Music_markup
The music part of WikiTeX seems pretty good, it even generates midis along with the sheet music image!
http://wikisophia.org/wiki/Wikitex#Music
-- Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com
If the WMF developers ever allow that extension to go live, Wikisource is already prepared to accept musical scores. All of are current policies at en.WS already do allow sheet music even though it is technically not feasible. I would welcome all contributers from IMSLP to join us at Wikisource and jump right in adding scores when the technical issue is taken care of. The best thing I can recommend to make this happen is to recruit some developers to work on the technical side and see that lilypond meets approval for going live.
Birgitte SB
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
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
On 22/10/2007, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
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.
The obvious exception that springs to mind is unpublished material - this varies, but generally material which is posthumously published for the first time gets a fixed copyright term (held by the 'discoverer') even if it would have been out of copyright through being old. The exact form of protection, and how long it's protected for, varies both on the specific material and on the local legislation.
For example, you can say "all of Wilde's plays are out of copyright", and be generally correct - he died 1900 - but the four-act edition of "The Importance of Being Earnest" is still in copyright, because this was only rediscovered and republished recently.
Determining which version of a musical work is the actually-published old one, and which is the amended (altered, edited?) new one, can be rather tricky for a nonspecialist.
Andrew Gray wrote:
On 22/10/2007, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
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.
The obvious exception that springs to mind is unpublished material - this varies, but generally material which is posthumously published for the first time gets a fixed copyright term (held by the 'discoverer') even if it would have been out of copyright through being old. The exact form of protection, and how long it's protected for, varies both on the specific material and on the local legislation.
For example, you can say "all of Wilde's plays are out of copyright", and be generally correct - he died 1900 - but the four-act edition of "The Importance of Being Earnest" is still in copyright, because this was only rediscovered and republished recently.
Determining which version of a musical work is the actually-published old one, and which is the amended (altered, edited?) new one, can be rather tricky for a nonspecialist.
These exceptions are always there, but they do not justify a blanket statement covering all of a person's works. Much also depends on the country involved. In the absence of specific facts I can't comment on the Wilde material. Canadian law is in transition since the end of 1998 to a strict life + 50 rule, with no additional protection for posthumous works. Material discovered today written by a person who died before 1949 is not protected. The editor's additions would still receive protection, but not the original material. No copyrights are attached to discovery.
The question of musical works does have a few wrinkles that would be difficult for a non-specialist. Musical typography may be the most important one, but if we have adequate musical software in place we don't need their typography. Minor changes and correction would lack the originality required for a new copyright. This sort of question suggests that a case by case review is needed for musical scores, and that we should shy away from generalisations.
Ec
On 10/22/07, Klaus Graf klausgraf@googlemail.com wrote:
There is a current trend for all our common cultural heritage to be "privatized" and exploited by private corporations for the sole purpose of making money. The idea that the works of Shakespeare, Beethoven and Leonardo da Vinci (et al) should "belong" to anyone except the people of this planet (and beyond) is outrageous.
While the plain text of Shakespeare's works is undoubtedly in the public domain, if I were to prepare and publish a collection of Shakespeare's works then I would have copyright over things like the layout and the typographical arrangement and such. In Australia this is referred to as a "published edition", I'm not sure what it's called elsewhere.
The same goes for sheet music. I could prepare and publish the sheet music of a Mozart concerto, and while ths music itself would be public domain, I would still have copyright in the published edition.
Plus, as Gregory mentioned, there can be entirely new copyrights in things like transcriptions for different instruments or other alterations and notations, not to mention new arrangements of the music.
On 10/22/07, Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote: [snip]
The same goes for sheet music. I could prepare and publish the sheet music of a Mozart concerto, and while ths music itself would be public domain, I would still have copyright in the published edition.
Plus, as Gregory mentioned, there can be entirely new copyrights in things like transcriptions for different instruments or other alterations and notations, not to mention new arrangements of the music.
Speaking of Mozart... There are solutions to problems like this:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Image%3AMozart_Sonate_%28manu...
But good luck reading that! (actually, his notation is more readable than some others I've seen.. ;) )
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org