IMSLP Forums

Jonathan Irons posted an article on U.E.'s website here.

It is just devastating. I'm not going to waste my energy of replying each false or one-sided statement. To me, it is very clear that Irons and UE are feeling the breath of an anger community on their neck. Probably they are even realizing they have taken not the best step. Add to this the media attention, and the result is UE scared to loose its name and face - Irons, you must remember the anger orchestra librarians!

The reaction is typical: cowardice and a total lack of politeness and communicativeness. Some weeks ago, they decided not to reply or make statements in this community any more. After silently reading this forum, sitting in the dark and hunting for anything they could make seem a sign of weakness, they put up their statement on their website, which is based on a couple of reactions in this forum after their "communication stop".

Once again, the company shows its remarkable agressiveness: the letter is a tirade of false accusations, turning of our words, facts without context, pure fantasy, and even humiliations. They never left a message on this forum or personally contacted me about this, lacking any form of politeness. And, when stating this on your private website, it's very easy when you don't have to deal with the possibility of nasty answers or difficult questions, isn't it?

So go on, U.E. Go on and keep on loosing the tiny bit of credibility you have left.

N.B. I hold copyright on my posts in this forum. U.E. is likely to be infringing copyright by reproducing my work without my consent. Be prepared for my C&D.

It's telling (and disappointing) that Mr. Irons feels compelled to resort even to blatant lies to defend his position. To name but some of the most egregious ones:

* IMSLP did not run out of money. In fact Feldmahler stated explicitly that "monetary concerns are minimal". That is, unless you count being faced with legal threats involving six-digit sums as "running out of money".

* The category "Non-Public Domain Composers" contains composers who agreed to publish their music for free under a Creative Commons license. Connecting this to any (actual or alleged) copyright violations is pure malicious slander.

* Nobody around here proposed 'launching a “pirate party”'. In fact, somebody was promiting the goals of the (preexisting) Swedish Pirate Party. As far as I can tell, this was essentially one single user who joined the forum only after the closure of the IMSLP, so it can hardly be considered representative of the IMSLP community as a whole. Same goes for "abolish copyright law, abolish capitalism". I'm not sure the latter was even proposed here, but it's most evidently not the opinion of any significant portion of the IMSLP community.

* No forum threads were closed to silence dissenting voices. I challenge Mr. Irons to show us even one single instance where this happened. In the turmoil that ensued the closure of IMSLP, some redundant threads had to be closed and the posts moved to other threads on the same topic. Depicting this as censorship is, again, nothing but slander.

I stop here, but this is certainly not all there would be to say on Mr. Irons' article.

Leonard Vertighel wrote:* The category "Non-Public Domain Composers" contains composers who agreed to publish their music for free under a Creative Commons license. Connecting this to any (actual or alleged) copyright violations is pure malicious slander.

Actually, it's libel: slander is verbal, not written.

lcrighton wrote:Actually, it's libel: slander is verbal, not written.

Thank you for the correction. (English is not my native language.)

Leonard Vertighel wrote:

lcrighton wrote:Actually, it's libel: slander is verbal, not written.

Thank you for the correction. (English is not my native language.)

You write well - even some people who are native speakers confuse lible and slander.

I agree with everything said, however regarding the following:

N.B. I hold copyright on my posts in this forum. U.E. is likely to be infringing copyright by reproducing my work without my consent. Be prepared for my C&D.

Although I don't think a quote can be considered infringing I do have the following information:

I requested Mr. Irons that I can quote his emails on the forums, and he requested that I do not. Considering his blatant disregard and hypocrisy here, I see no point in refraining from quoting his emails in the future.


Mr. Irons has always made it quite clear that he wishes to control what and how people say things.

Mr. Irons to me wrote:Sorry to bother you again Yagan, but I was wondering whether you could help me regarding this comment, apparently made by you on Oct 2: " Everything on this site is at the very least free and completely legal in Canada, and mostly in the US and EU and AU."

Were you saying - before our C&D letter - that the IMSLP contained material that was not legal in the US, the EU and AU?

Best wishes

Jonathan

Again

By the way, Yagan, you wrote somewhere on the forum how UE had blackmailed, bullied and ravaged IMSLP. I find this blatantly untrue remark rather disturbing, as it only goes to show how little you have understood the course of action we took.

I fail to see how Mr Irons is going to attempt to control what and how people say things. In my country, unless something spoken or written is in direct conflict with or threatens national security or is considered slanderous or libellous, people have the right, and that right is called freedom of expression. Sure UE and Irons can say what they like about us because of this freedom, but that's not to say we can't fight back. And we know we are right, because that is the truth.

In Australia, if you question our involvement in Iraq you could be held without charges, for an undefined period of time under the sedition law. I also remember Blair saying that it was illegal for people in England to question the Israel - Palestine conflict, I also find it hard to believe Canada have made it illegal to question the Holocaust... even Germany. The Constitution of the US isn't exactly fool-proof either; you can't have your citizenship taken away from you (as said in the constitution) but there are ways of getting around it, such as they claim that by doing certain actions you "voluntarily" give up your citizenship.

The world is full of lies and money, thank god for the internet...

That's scary. I never knew there were so much restriction of freedom of expression around the globe. Thank god also for the creation of blogs...

Speaking of that, Blair also threatened legal action against blogs if they so much as criticize his government. Luckily he is gone... hopefully the replacement won't threaten such.