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Just a question: there is a great scan of Mahler's 1st, but it is the 1967 "Revised edition" published by Universal Edition, apparently based on the 1906 original edition. The anonymous donor had said that he believe there are no note changes except for some dynamics and articulations and minor error corrections. Is the 1967 UE edition public domain? This is quite a big thing, so it'd be nice if it were on IMSLP

Also, just a confirmation: autograph scores of public domain composers are public domain right?

Corrections of errors are not original contributions and therefore not the subject of copyright. The US case law is fairly extensive in this regard, so UE's claim would only stand on the editor's preface.

Manuscripts are not protected separately as copyrightable works. While they might have been protected as "unpublished works" before 2003 under the operation of common-law copyright, on Jan. 1, 2003 all unpublished works of authors who died more than 70 years before entered the US public domain in one fell swoop. There is still a lot of deliberate obfuscation of this fact on the part of libraries and others who own manuscripts, so we should not be surprised to see complaints and even threats over the issue.

I am not sure where Canadian law falls on the issue of manuscripts, but most countries appear to take the view that all manuscripts of public domain authors are public domain. The only potential bugaboo would be if someone is claiming a photographic copyright on digital files of a manuscript. This is particularly irksome in the case of manuscripts that are in the posession of public libraries and museums.

Carolus wrote:Corrections of errors are not original contributions and therefore not the subject of copyright. The US case law is fairly extensive in this regard, so UE's claim would only stand on the editor's preface.

Ah... but you don't happen to know anything specific about that edition do you? I'm just wondering if there is a way short of actually comparing each note to know that the score is not a significant edition (because the anonymous donor isn't complete sure)... If you don't know anything about the edition that's fine Was just curious...

By the way, I searched around the Canadian Copyright Act, and apparently manuscripts are public domain according to the act... though there may be photographic traps as you say. Though considering Canada's stance on digitalization, I won't be surprised if the photographic claim does not hold water at all in court.

About unpublished manuscripts, Canada grants a copyright term of publication+50, with unpublished manuscripts forever under copyright (until publication, at which time the clock starts ticking). Though, we can use the US server for manuscripts in this case since life+70 would include most of the manuscripts that are supposed to be public domain (had they been published within the author's lifetime) anyway

By the way, is this granting of public domain status for manuscripts continuous (i.e. from now on all unpublished works will fall into the PD 70 years after the author's death), or is it just a one time thing (i.e. the manuscripts that were not rendered pd on 2003 continues to be protected forevermore until publication, or whatever the original length is)?

The 70 years after death rule is continuous. On Jan. 1, 2003 all unpublished works of authors who died before 1933 passsed into the public domain. The next year (1/1/2004), all unpublished works of authors who died in 1933 went PD, and so on each year thereafter. For example, on Jan. 1 of next year all unpublished works of French composers Ravel, Vierne, and Roussel will enter the US public domain.

I think the US law now parallels the EU law in this regard. Canada still appears to employ a remnant of the common-law idea that unpublished works are under permanent copyright until such time as they are published. It used to be that way in the US also, but the 1978 revision of the copyright law changed that.

As for the Mahler critical edition, it's worth mention that not a single work was actually re-engraved for the series. All are corrected engravings of earlier, PD scores. The edition in question very much falls under the "urtext" rubric, though Austria's law - like England's - is considerably more vague than the German statute. I think it's a case where you can claim "urtext" and post it. 1967 is more than 25 years, and they didn't even bother to re-engrave, but merely fixed the 1906 Weinberger/UE score.

I see... great! Thanks for all the info