IMSLP Forums

Is it okay to typeset from new urtext editions? Personally I think that since urtext are a "result of scientific analyses", any creative interpretations or modernizations should be nonexistant, so there should really be nothing to claim copyright on. Maybe some various versions are available in the urtext edition as ossias, but these shouldn't be copyrighable since practically anyone who have their hands on two different versions could compile them in ossias and do the same.

Neue Liszt-Ausgabe was particulary in mind.

In a word - yes. The only case I can think of where one could get into legal difficulty would be if you re-typeset an edition that was less than 25 years old which qualified for the editio princeps concept that appears to be in force for at least parts of the EU. Basically, it means that if Baerenreiter or another publisher issued the first version ever published of a previously unknown work, they are granted a 25 year monopoly on it. Canada would appear to grant a 50 year monopoly on such a publication, while the USA grants no such monopoly if a composer has been dead more than 70 years - the only copyrihtable element being the editor's contribution.

So if I understand it correctly, a work that is published for the first time is copyrighted for 25 years in parts of EU (Germany), 50 in Canada but none in US if the composer has been dead more than 70 years. So this would mean that I could e.g. retypeset "Albumblatter for Princess Witgenstein, S166m-n" (apparently first published in 2000 by Editio Musica Budapest, compiled by Mária Eckhardt, critical edition [hyperion sleeve notes]) but then it would have to be submitted to the US server.

The public domain status for unpublished works of authors who dies more than 70 years ago applies only to those works that were unpublished as of January 1, 2003. Because the Liszt piece you mention was actually published in 2000, it will be protected in the USA until Jan. 1, 2048. Sorry for the confusion, I should have been more precisde about US status. Works of authors dead more than 70 years first published from 1/1/1978 through 12/31/2002 are under copyright until 1/1/2048.

There are so many bizarre rules and angles to US copyright that it's just too easy - even for someone who has worked in the field for a long time - to simply not remember this or that particular wrinkle or exception to a general rule. I'll go and sacrifice a chicken, spread its entrails on my computer keyboard and ask forgiveness from the entity that American copyright lawyers worship (though most seem to worship the spirit of Benjamin Franklin, especially when his icon is in neat stacks of 100 or more).

Hahahahaha!

Speaking of which, feel free to add anything that comes to your mind to the public domain page, Carolus... that way we can avoid duplicate questions as well as have a centralized place to find information about the public domain