IMSLP Forums

I'm the host of http://digital-copyright.ca , a citizens forum involved in copyright revision in Canada. I find it disgusting that foreign groups are trying to discourage you from doing something that is perfectly legal in Canada.

I wasn't aware of the site until it was shut down. I have been a supporter of the Project Gutenberg which seeks to do something similar for other works in the public domain such a books where the same life+50 vs higher terms of copyright come up.

I wonder if using the term "International" is part of the problem, given that while the scores may be International that the site can't be. While most countries use life+50 for the term of copyright, some extremists have managed to confuse their domestic governments to go beyond that. The citizens in those countries have to wait 20 or more years past the death of the composer to access these scores than we do.


What the German publishing industry was asking for is unreasonable: it is not possible to use technology to block access from certain countries. We all know that proxies are very common, and the decision to access your site is entirely in the hands of the browser and not your site. You could require that people log in and tell you what country they are in, but you need to be protected from liability from anyone who wants to say they are from a different country.

If you haven't already, bring your case to the people at the http://CIPPIC.ca law clinic. They may be interested to take this on, or might know other lawyers who might.

I would suggest you try to contact the site administrator directly at: imslp@imslp.org
I'm sure he will be willing to consider this.

This will get more views in the announcement section (where around 99% of discussion are) I'll move it there.

Many articles are being written. I suspect the most important to view are those of lawyer Howard Knop at http://excesscopyright.blogspot.com/ and Michael Geist at http://www.michaelgeist.ca/

Howard received a letter from the relevant foreign lawyer, and has offered his own responses to the points.

I wonder if these foreign lawyers who incorrectly think offering IP based filtering is so cheap are willing to pay the costs of the source data for volunteer sites like this? While it is true that BGP (Boarder Gateway Protocol, the core routing protocol) data can (with a fair bit of work) be translated into geographic data, this will be a service that is sold and not something that is $free. It should be the responsibility of the foreign copyright holders to pay for this if such a service should be offered, not volunteer community sites like yours. Anything beyond providing a notice of the possibly different term of copyright in different countries should be their responsibility, not yours.