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Hello, what should we do with cases as Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses, first version, S.154 (Liszt, Franz)? I copied talk page discussion here:

Homepage of http://www.classical-sheet-music.eu/, bottom line: You are not allowed to republish any materials of this site on other sites. Peter talk 14:12, 21 May 2007 (EDT)

PD? --Funper 14:12, 21 May 2007 (EDT)

Well it's indeed PD... So they can't claim copyright. But I don't know what our policy is in these cases where they ask politely not to redistribute. It's different from e.g. WIMA where there is an authorship - scanning does not produce authorship. I'll copy this to the forum. Cheers Peter talk 14:18, 21 May 2007 (EDT)

On one side, it's perfectly legal and there are very beautiful scores on such sites. On the other side, we don't want get into problematic relationship with these sites.

Well... there is actually already a few precedents for this, for example, this. The policy on IMSLP is: the file is allowed on IMSLP and will not be deleted as long as there is no copyright infringement.

The reason for this policy is partly from me having to deal with these situations. Up to now, and not including this case at hand, there have been 5 requests, more or less politely, for me to remove either scans, or even at times valid copyrights in jurisdictions other than used on IMSLP (for example, the case of Sorabji). I have not complied with any of the requests, because I do not want to set a precedent for the removal of public domain material from IMSLP. Once this precedent is set, we are well on the road to having pretty much nothing on IMSLP out of courtesy to select few people. Having copyright infringement as a guideline is a very hard and solid standard, and should be a great guide as to the permissible content on IMSLP.

Furthermore, what is "public domain" should be, as the name suggests, "public", and this should not be compromised at all costs; or else we would have lost a much larger right. Copyright is not meant to protect all labour, but only creativity. There is really no point in redoing manually what others have already done; the only thing that results is inefficiency and the hindrance of the very goal copyright is designed to promote, namely the furtherance of creative endevours. This is exactly why the Canadian copyright law does not assign copyright to digitalizations (scans) of public domain works.

Regarding relationships with other sites, I believe it is a good idea to just let them go wherever luck and chance takes it. In no way is having good relationships with other sites part of IMSLP's goals, and thus should not be taken into consideration in the setting of policies. IMSLP will collaborate with other sites if it is deemed in the best interest of both parties to do so, but will not compromise any internal policy because of such collaboration.

I hope this clarifies the issue once and for all hehe

You took the words out of my mouth..

Off topic: Besides I have removed the link from Liszt's wikipedia article (that site Peter mentioned above), so now only IMSLP is mentioned with CPDL and WIMA, the latter which I should remove in a couple of days if there aren't going to be any reactions on my recent link change... this should make it less competive for Liszt's IMSLP page.

Funper wrote:Off topic: Besides I have removed the link from Liszt's wikipedia article (that site Peter mentioned above), so now only IMSLP is mentioned with CPDL and WIMA, the latter which I should remove in a couple of days if there aren't going to be any reactions on my recent link change... this should make it less competive for Liszt's IMSLP page.

Links on Wikipedia are fine Whereas having good relationships with other sites is not part of IMSLP's goal, there is also no need to actively undermine other sites' efforts; I'm convinced that people will prefer IMSLP above the other sites after they have used it

I concur with Feldmahler, too.

Funper wrote:Off topic: Besides I have removed the link from Liszt's wikipedia article (that site Peter mentioned above), so now only IMSLP is mentioned with CPDL and WIMA, the latter which I should remove in a couple of days if there aren't going to be any reactions on my recent link change... this should make it less competive for Liszt's IMSLP page.

Isn't that unnecessarily mean? While I have no intention of being "nice" to other sites, I don't know that obstruction is the way to go, either.

Hahaha... the first time I've seen a forums post collision Anyway, I agree with Emeraldimp that removing links to other sites is unnecessary... as I always say: play nice

emeraldimp wrote:I concur with Feldmahler, too.

Funper wrote:Off topic: Besides I have removed the link from Liszt's wikipedia article (that site Peter mentioned above), so now only IMSLP is mentioned with CPDL and WIMA, the latter which I should remove in a couple of days if there aren't going to be any reactions on my recent link change... this should make it less competive for Liszt's IMSLP page.

Isn't that unnecessarily mean? While I have no intention of being "nice" to other sites, I don't know that obstruction is the way to go, either.

This is not a question of being mean or obstuctive. I believe that our goals are in a sense very similar to those of Wikipedia, and that it is natural for us to cooperate with Wikipedia. Now I don't want to talk about the WIMA link here which is a slightly more complex question, but I'm pretty sure that the other link would have been removed sooner or later anyway. Wikipedia is not a web directory, and free content is always preferred over equivalent non-free alternatives (even if the copyright notices that make it non-free are actually bogus). I think that removing links that are not in accordance with Wikipedia's guidelines is a good thing (try to motivate the removal by citing the appropriate guideline in the edit summary, if possible), and thus in particular the removal of the link mentioned in the opening post was justified (again, I'm not discussing WIMA).

Ahh.... I didn't know about Wikipedia's guidelines. If removing complies with Wikipedia's guidelines, than by all means