aslsp-fl wrote:In my opinion IMSLP should have kept a stricter control, and probably sticking to the EU term of copyright (life+70) would have been a sensible thing to do.
It would absolutely NOT have been a "sensible thing to do."
Canada, like Germany, or Mexico, Guatemala, or Côte-d'Ivoire, or Colombia, is a sovereign country.
Let's play along, and accept your argument that a Canadian organization, dishing out files from a Canadian server, should abide by the laws of a foreign country.
Why should this principle be restricted to Canada?
This must also mean that in the US, nothing can be treated as public domain under the pre-1923 rule. Project Gutenberg would have to remove all of its files which are PD under US law, but still copyrighted in the life+50, life+60, or life+70 countries.
It would also mean that people in German or other EU countries could no longer rely on the life+70 rule. They would have to honour and respect the life+75 term in Guatemala and several other countries.
Except that they couldn't. They would have to respect the life+80 law of Colombia, and the life+80 rule which applies to certain works under Spanish law.
Except that they couldn't do that, either, because Côte-d'Ivoire has a life+99 rule, and if Canada has to respect Germany's law, then Germany has to respect Côte-d'Ivoire's.
Except that Mexico just recently, idiotically, extended their term to life+100.
Where does it end?
And why does it only work in one direction? If Germany can insist that German law applies in Canada for the purpose of calculating how much copyright there is, then surely someone in Germany, or Canada, or anywhere else, can rely on Ethiopian or Afghani law for calculating how little there is: two countries which lack copyright laws and hence copyright terms.
So, no, asking citizens of one country to live their lives by the laws of another is NOT a sensible thing to do.
It is eminently non-sensible.
