IMSLP Forums

I desperately want to get a look at Sibelius' 7th symphony and Tapiola (and the 6th symphony too). They're all on the IMSLP, but they've each been pending copyright review for over a full year now. The 50th anniversary of Sibelius' death was September 20th, 2007 -- this should mean that his works are all public domain in Canada, yes?

If somebody could tell me when and whether these works are likely to be made available, I would very much appreciate it.

Dear daeward,

Sibelius is indeed in the Canadian public domain as 50 years have elapsed since his death. Unfortunately, the IMSLP is presently somewhat hampered by the US law as well, owing to technical and legal issues which unfortunately are not likely to be solved in the very near future. For works published between 1923 and 1977 (and thus including late Sibelius) there is an entirely different copyright term under US law that is not dependent on the lifetime of the composer but is up to 95 years from the date of publication. This is why there is currently a block on some IMSLP scores that are not approved for download in the US - it isn't due to the copyright review still being pending.

As has been stated numerous times in the forums, the management is looking into the problem, but a solution is some time away.

Regards, PML

They are not pending copyright review. They are blocked on purpose because they are not PD in the united states (which is where the majority of traffic comes from). At least this is my understanding. In the future there are hopes of doing some sort of geographic based copyright verification base on the IP address of the requester. This has not yet been implemented.

This question comes up quite often. Perhaps the 'Error' page can be made more clear to spell this out. Something like this:

Error: This file is unavailable because either:
- It is not public domain in the united states (point to some other page for details regarding the issue)
- It is pending copyright review

Better yet the error page should be different for these two cases. That way they won't even see the 'pending copyright review' verbiage.

horndude77 wrote:In the future there are hopes of doing some sort of geographic based copyright verification base on the IP address of the requester.

Are you sure? Communication of future plans has always been scant, so you might well know something that I don't know here, but I was under the impression that geolocation had been ruled out as not feasible.

horndude77 wrote:Better yet the error page should be different for these two cases. That way they won't even see the 'pending copyright review' verbiage.

I agree, the way in which blocked files are presented to users at the present moment is quite confusing to most users who are not very well acquainted with the workings of IMSLP.

Leonard Vertighel wrote:

horndude77 wrote:In the future there are hopes of doing some sort of geographic based copyright verification base on the IP address of the requester.

Are you sure? Communication of future plans has always been scant, so you might well know something that I don't know here, but I was under the impression that geolocation had been ruled out as not feasible.

agreed

Peter wrote:

Leonard Vertighel wrote:

horndude77 wrote:In the future there are hopes of doing some sort of geographic based copyright verification base on the IP address of the requester.

Are you sure? Communication of future plans has always been scant, so you might well know something that I don't know here, but I was under the impression that geolocation had been ruled out as not feasible.

agreed

Was the idea floated that different IMSLP servers in U.S. and Canada in the future might differently host files based on copyright status, i.e., works P.D. in Canada but not in U.S. would be on the Canadian server, but not the U.S. one? (By itself, as I understand, that arrangement would still not limit access by IP address, so the downloading would be at the user's risk.)

Lyle, not to my knowledge.

Geolocational verification is not an option for the future as that implies self-censorship, something we are opposed to. At least this was the consensus last I heard.

Leonard, agreed infinitely. I actually brought this point up many, many times. Having a generic "oops, we're working on the problem" message does not inspire user's confidence, especially after 8 months of up-time.

All, indeed, these works are not under review. Their review has been ascertained from the very beginning when I began that Sibelius project.
The blocking is our internal censorship and represents our skepticism about certain aspects of IMSLP/Petrucci's operation.
I'm not an authority on this matter but am irked by it as much as anyone else, especially after having scanned and submitted about 4,000 pages for the Sibelius project and around 7,200 for the Schmitt project alone--decidedly the overwhelming majority of their complete works and which the overwhelming majority are incarcerated.

However, it is my understanding that such restrictions are not permanent and are scheduled to be lifted at some point. In the mean time, let there be some comfort in knowing that all those files "locked" are present, safe and sound, and will be available to users sometime in the future.

Thank you for the clarification about IP based censorship being ruled out. I'm not very current on these types of issues.

In any case the scary error page should certainly be changed to be clearer on this point to avoid the continuation questions like this.

Thank you, all. Hopefully this will be sorted out sooner rather than later.