IMSLP Forums

Hello,

I saw EU copyrights for Macfarlane set until the year 2116 (a hundred years more?) and one at 'C' and I think it needs to be 2016 instead for all of the scores because the composer died in 1945?

See: http://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Macfarlane,_Will_C.

Is this correct (the 'c' for one score and all the others 2116) and if yes why?

regards,
Choul

It was not correct and has been fixed. The tags should actually all have been V/V/C - all the publications we have are Schirmer (an American company), meaning that the rule of the shorter term comes into effect for the EU (Macfarlane was English-American).

KGill wrote:It was not correct and has been fixed. The tags should actually all have been V/V/C - all the publications we have are Schirmer (an American company), meaning that the rule of the shorter term comes into effect for the EU (Macfarlane was English-American).

Thank you @Kgill

Choul, please note that even though the EU applies a "Rule of the Shorter Term" to non-EU works, many of the larger EU countries (like France, UK, and Germany) have bilateral treaties with the USA which supercede the EU directive, granting US citizens the same term as for a native. This can be a tricky area, so be careful.

Carolus wrote:Choul, please note that even though the EU applies a "Rule of the Shorter Term" to non-EU works, many of the larger EU countries (like France, UK, and Germany) have bilateral treaties with the USA which supercede the EU directive, granting US citizens the same term as for a native. This can be a tricky area, so be careful.

Thank you Carolus for the warning, but I didn't ask it for the score, I'm trying to understand the copyright rules that's all. How can I find out if there are any bilateral treaties between the USA and a country in the EU? I live in the Netherlands BTW. What you say does mean that it's not always true that when it's published by an American publisher that's it's pd for the EU, at least not for every country in the EU, is that correct?

Hi, That's correct. This can be a very tricky area - and there have been a few EU court cases about it. It seems that the old treaties (I think the one between USA and Netherlands goes back to 1893) actually trump the EU directive about "Rule of the Shorter Term". The two cases I know of took place in Germany. One was over Gershwin back in the late 1990s. The Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_the_shorter_term gives a good overview.

Thank you @Carolus for the extra information, I didn't know about that list yet. Thanks!