IMSLP Forums

Hi all,

I'm happy to see that the Digital library of the Milan Conservatory (http://www.consmilano.it/index.php?id=b ... a_digitale ) has raised interest in the people reading this forum. Several questions, I see, are on the table, concerning image downloading, copyright, payment of fees and more. I'm going to answer at my best all the questions you have. Starting from the very beginning of this: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4871

"...
However, the website is configured to prevent downloading of any of these manuscripts. It includes a notice stating: l'uso delle riproduzioni è regolato dal D.Lgs. 9 aprile 2003 n. 68 e dagli art. 106 e 110 del Codice dei Beni Culturali (The use of reproductions is controlled by the Law of April 9, 2003, no. 68, and by Articles 106 and 110 of the Code of Cultural Goods.) ..."

The quoted law just says that public libraries in Italy have the right (or better: the duty) to ask reproduction fees in order to cover the expenses involved in the reproduction process.

Our digital library is intended as an extension of our physical library: that is, you can read online, wherever in the world, our digitized documents at no charge, exactly like when you sit in our reading room. If reading the document online is not enough for you and you want to download a document from our digital library you are, in our view, asking us for a reproduction, and this is the reason why the library is asking you for a fee payment.

At the moment, in fact, due to bureaucratic problems (http://www.consmilano.it/index.php?id=370 ... that's Italy payment of such fee is not possible, and for this reason download is not possible too, but the store system will be available again before September.

Actions like the one by "generoso" (http://imslp.org/wiki/User:Generoso ):

http://www.google.com/search?q=site:ims ... .+Verdi%22

who downloads images from our digital library and uploads them as PDF on Petrucci are obviously going to kill our service, as we rely on payment fees from users asking for reproductions to pay the IT dedicated infrastructure...

I hope this will be a starting point for clarification and I wait for your reactions!

Gabriele Gamba
Conservatorio di Milano - Biblioteca
( http://www.consmilano.it/index.php?id=367 )

Hi Gabriele,

The quoted law just says that public libraries in Italy have the right (or better: the duty) to ask reproduction fees in order to cover the expenses involved in the reproduction process.

I suppose that eventually this might be handed over to the lawyers to discuss, or those with some insight into the legalities — so let me say outright that I am not a lawyer and do not speak for the website.

The subsequent discussion on the thread you mentioned indicated that while the right (or duty) to ask for fees existed, there seemed to be no method for it to be successfully enforced (in the U.S., at the very least). If there are rights involved, it is owing to separate domain-specific laws involving reproductions, with an unusual intersection of intellectual property rights and public domain works. (This was clearly spelled out as three separate types of intellectual property identified by Choralia in the first reply there.)

Our digital library is intended as an extension of our physical library: that is, you can read online, wherever in the world, our digitized documents at no charge, exactly like when you sit in our reading room. If reading the document online is not enough for you and you want to download a document from our digital library you are, in our view, asking us for a reproduction, and this is the reason why the library is asking you for a fee payment.

The method used by Generoso to make a permanent copy from a viewed image is possible because displaying an image on a remote computer screen (whether or not there is a convenient “link” to “download” the image) creates a digital copy anyway : bureaucratically, if a payment was demanded then it probably should have been requested at a point prior to the library server allowing the client to see the image. Again, the fact that Generoso or any other user of the image chooses to use a screen capture or some other method to make a permanent copy of an image of a public domain manuscript or painting that they see over the internet probably cannot be proscribed as illegal in all possible jurisdictions. An agreement on the part of the viewer to respect the relevant Italian laws when they look at one of the library’s images again looks only weakly enforceable.

As a result, this looks like the case of the horse and the unbolted stable door — if the idiom is unknown in Italy, I’m sure someone will give a more appropriate simile.

It is the nature of the internet that while setting up the technological infrastructure has large costs associated with it, the generation of extra copies is in effect extremely low cost: essentially, the per usage cost of the infrastructure support, bandwidth and server utilisation for a single page view is driven sharply down over a very large number of hits on the server. Administratively, it is arguable that the library should be making reproductions for itself as a means of preservation and or restoration of its holdings as an act of responsible stewardship of its treasures: if some terrible fire, flood or other disaster destroyed the physical library but left an off-site backup of the stored data and images unharmed, then those digital copies might be the only remaining records.

Obviously if the system of paying before viewing were in place it might arguably reduce the level of use of the system (indeed it could be argued this would have a much more negative effect than the existence of some PDFs being made freely available at IMSLP). The question then should be asked, are the digital reproductions being charged at a fair rate compared to physical printed copies, or is the digital system being designed to essentially pay the way for the preservation efforts and the infrastructure?

Interesting questions. I gather the system has a few problems currently:

At the moment, in fact, due to bureaucratic problems (http://www.consmilano.it/index.php?id=370 ... that's Italy :-) payment of such fee is not possible, and for this reason download is not possible too, but the store system will be available again before September.

So perhaps this indicates these issues needed to be considered a little bit more carefully. One method to differentiate the freely viewable image from the purchased downloadable copy might be to limit the screen resolution of unpurchased internet copies to say, 300% rather than the full 800% resolution, if the library wishes to insist on asserting its right to charge for reproductions.

Best regards, Philip

Hi Philip

I suppose that eventually this might be handed over to the lawyers to discuss, or those with some insight into the legalities — so let me say outright that I am not a lawyer and do not speak for the website.

The subsequent discussion on the thread you mentioned indicated that while the right (or duty) to ask for fees existed, there seemed to be no method for it to be successfully enforced (in the U.S., at the very least). If there are rights involved, it is owing to separate domain-specific laws involving reproductions, with an unusual intersection of intellectual property rights and public domain works. (This was clearly spelled out as three separate types of intellectual property identified by Choralia in the first reply there.)

My intention was to explain why we ask money for reproductions. From my point of view, the problem with some users in this forum is that they don't see the difference between "container" and "content" (or between "work" and "item", at FRBR level: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional ... ic_Records ).

I have no problem with people transcribing in Finale the music contained in the documents in our digital library: the music there is public domain! I'll never scan a document from our library that is still under copyright!

On the other side, I can't send you reproductions for free when you ask for a document: there is people work involved, the scanner is not in the library (we can't afford buying one nor having people here to operate it), so the user asking for reproductions has to pay for the service, that's obvious. No problem in enforcing this: I'm not sending you your reproductions if you don't pay for them...

The method used by Generoso to make a permanent copy from a viewed image is possible because displaying an image on a remote computer screen ...

As a result, this looks like the case of the horse and the unbolted stable door — if the idiom is unknown in Italy, I’m sure someone will give a more appropriate simile.

In Italian the idiom is just the same: I'm here just to inform Generoso and other users like him that their action will end in our digital library not being free anymore. Just an example: anyone interested in studying the autograph of the first opera written by Bellini, Adelson e Salvini, can now find It online, and free:

http://navigator.codex2.cilea.it/nav?f1 ... e=external

If we'll have to ask a fee just for viewing the documents and not only for download of selected pages, everyone will loose this opportunity. It's up to you, the users.
The "bureaucratic problems" that we had in the past months have been in fact a long discussion between the library, promoting free access to the images, and our administration, preferring a fee-only system. Library has prevailed, but if the model we propose will not be valid, because no one will download images from our digital library paying a fee finding them as free PDF on Petrucci, we'll have to change the model.

One method to differentiate the freely viewable image from the purchased downloadable copy might be to limit the screen resolution of unpurchased internet copies to say, 300% rather than the full 800% resolution, if the library wishes to insist on asserting its right to charge for reproductions

Please have a look at the link above: with manuscripts or printed materials in bad condition you just see rubbish at lower resolution. We can't ask people to pay for downloading images if we offer unreadable previews. And no, we are asserting no right, we are just asking people interested in our music to help us preserving and promoting it: this preservation and promotion work has a cost and we need help to cover it.

Best
Gabriele

Conservatorio_Milano wrote:And no, we are asserting no right, we are just asking people interested in our music to help us preserving and promoting it: this preservation and promotion work has a cost and we need help to cover it.

Hi Gabriele,

Why not use the IMSLP method: make everything free, but ask for donations, merchandising, volunteers, interns, etc? Your library's a priceless asset, a unique institution at the heart of European civilization. People are willing to support such "brands". In marketing terms, the Milan Conservatory Library is a "passion brand" and that's gold-dust.

But you squander that passion if you establish the wrong business model.

Phil

This is very interesting. Let me outline the basic problem just to make certain I am understanding the core issues involved here:

1. The Milan Conservatory Library is required under Italian law to charge for copies of files in order to help offset the high costs of maintaining the archive, digitization and preservation of its manuscripts. They are not asserting any type of copyright on public domain material, but attempting to recover some of the costs involved in the activities above.

2. They fear that items mined from their site and uploaded to IMSLP as PDFs will have a negative effect on the income generated by their sale of copies (assuming they will be able to collect normally for such copies in the near future).

So we have a conflict here between two perfectly legitimate interests: The Milan Conservatory Library's legally mandated requirement to recover some of the costs involved in the preservation and digitization of their material and the general public's need for free access to such material (which is of course IMSLP's prime directive). It's a knotty problem, but I think Philidor may have actually touched upon a possible solution in his post above.

Gabriela, Nobody here wants to see Milan Conservatory here shut down or have to charge users to merely view their scores. We should work together to see if there is way in which both goals can be met. As Philip already mentioned, there is of course a major benefit of having items freely available at IMSLP: such items will be more likely to be preserved in digital form over the long term thanks to the vast number of copies made by people downloading them. Should a disaster take place in Milan, copies of files would still be available from locations scattered around the world.

One possibility I can think of would be for all Milan Conservatory PDFs available at IMSLP to contain an embedded link or a PayPal button so that end users could donate directly to Milan Conservatory via PayPal or some sort of similar method. As Philidor mentioned, this could very well be a far more effective method of generating funds to cover costs that by charging end users directly. As a non-profit institution, Milan Conservatory could also provide donors with a receipt to be filed with their taxes. That's just one idea off the top of my head, but we should certainly discuss this in detail. We very much want to help you if at all possible.

The Italian law was clearly conceived at a time when reproductions were essentially analogue, and they required the physical availability of the original at the library's premises. Technology has evolved a lot since then: reproductions can be done digitally and remotely, essentially at no cost; unlimited/unmetered server space and bandwidth are now definitely inexpensive; making files publicly available over the internet and allow anybody to create his/her own copy locally is totally affordable for everybody (being IMSLP-EU just an example). Therefore, I believe that sticking to a business model that is linked to a technology-obsolete law is inherently conflictual.

I think that some Italian and European funds exist for projects aimed at preserving and making widely available the Italian/European cultural heritage. To obtain funds, I think that some form of partnership with the participation of the Milan Conservatory Library (and possibly other music libraries) for the production of digital contents, and of IMSLP for facilitating the dissemination of such contents through its large user base, could be very competitive. Proposals may be jointly submitted, and I guess that the chances of success would be much larger with respect to individual submissions.

I cannot speak for Project Petrucci LLC, however I'm ready to play the IMSLP-EU role and give an Italian or European "flavour" to a possible project proposal.

I had a look at the fees for digital reproductions at the milan library.

Riproduzioni digitali *

da 1 a 12 immagini euro 15,00

dall'immagine 13 alla 50 euro 1,20 per ogni immagine

dall'immagine 51 alla 100 euro 1,00 per ogni immagine

dall'immagine 101 in poi euro 0,80 per ogni immagine.

The price for the mentioned opera of Bellini with pdf´s from all 593 pages is 505 €. I think, that the milan library will not have many customers.

Hi all, here some replies:

@ Philidor and others: your suggestion is nice, but situation in Italy is quite different from English-speaking countries: I'm not an administrative person, but I suspect that in fact our institution can't accept money donations at all, by law.

@ Carolus:

So we have a conflict here between two perfectly legitimate interests: The Milan Conservatory Library's legally mandated requirement to recover some of the costs involved in the preservation and digitization of their material and the general public's need for free access to such material (which is of course IMSLP's prime directive). It's a knotty problem, but I think Philidor may have actually touched upon a possible solution in his post above.

We are currently granting free access to the music! But people in this forum seem more interested in access to images of physical objects, that are library's property and that the library is responsible for, rather than in access to the music...
Images were paid by the library and produced for the library, and we don't want people disseminating these images, while we are just happy if people read, transcribe, play and enjoy the music that is written there. I really don't understand this "feticism" for our images: if you are really interested in the music, use your favorite music editor program and create a modern edition, then do what you want with it! The music author will thank you from the heaven and the library will be happy if you just add a link to our digital library or quote us. Isn't this activity more exciting than spending hours deleting library marks with Photoshop?

@ Carolus again:

... such items will be more likely to be preserved in digital form over the long term thanks to the vast number of copies made by people downloading them. Should a disaster take place in Milan, copies of files would still be available from locations scattered around the world

We, the library, are not worried by preservation of the music in the document. We are worried by preservation of the document itself. Our digital library maintains high quality versions of the images, of the whole documents, including covers, white pages and what else, accompanied by metadata created according to the more up-to-date international best practices. All of this is under weekly full backup and tapes are stored in a bank vault. This is digital preservation, according to the standards: having plenty of PDFs going around in the web is not.

Just an example: look on Petrucci for Alessandro Rolla works: you will find PDF of a manuscript that is in our library. All the library marks were erased by the uploader using Photoshop or something like that. Who can tell where that manuscript comes from? Who can certify that it is really from Rolla? You have to trust the (anonymous) uploader. Again: this is not digital preservation, it is just damaging music knowledge.

@ imslp-eu:

It is so easy to imagine great business with other people's money and work: EU, while investing a lot on projects like Europeana, is not giving anymore a penny for the crude digitization work. And Italian government can't prevent Pompei ruining, do you think they have money (or interest) for music by minor 19th century composers?

@ noten-schreiber:

I know, those fees are high, and I'm anticipating you that the new fees will be 4x higher. I really hope we will be able to going down again in the future, but this depends by the user reaction. For your information, all you find here:

http://www.consmilano.it/index.php?id=416

with the exception of the documents marked with shelfmark "Part.Tr.Ms" and "OBL.", was paid just by people like you, according to those rates.

Bye
Gabriele

Conservatorio_Milano wrote: @ Philidor and others: your suggestion is nice, but situation in Italy is quite different from English-speaking countries: I'm not an administrative person, but I suspect that in fact our institution can't accept money donations at all, by law.

Are you certain? If Rupert Murdoch woke up tomorrow and donated €10,000,000 to the Milan Conservatory Library, you'd be obliged, under Italian law, to return the cheque? I truly hope we can reach agreement on this. It's a great shame to place huge costs between musicians and public domain music manuscripts.

Conservatorio_Milano wrote:We are currently granting free access to the music! But people in this forum seem more interested in access to images of physical objects, that are library's property and that the library is responsible for, rather than in access to the music...
Images were paid by the library and produced for the library, and we don't want people disseminating these images, while we are just happy if people read, transcribe, play and enjoy the music that is written there. I really don't understand this "feticism" for our images

No, we are interested in free, unrestricted access to the music, which you do not provide. You provide it for viewing purposes only, if I understand correctly. IMSLP allows users to print out or do whatever they want with the music - because it is public domain. What do you mean by 'fetishism'?

We, the library, are not worried by preservation of the music in the document. We are worried by preservation of the document itself. Our digital library maintains high quality versions of the images, of the whole documents, including covers, white pages and what else, accompanied by metadata created according to the more up-to-date international best practices. All of this is under weekly full backup and tapes are stored in a bank vault. This is digital preservation, according to the standards: having plenty of PDFs going around in the web is not.

Sorry, I do not understand why having PDFs on the web of these high quality images is not another form of digital preservation. Indeed, it is in a way superior digital preservation, because it does not just preserve but also shares the music with others.

Just an example: look on Petrucci for Alessandro Rolla works: you will find PDF of a manuscript that is in our library. All the library marks were erased by the uploader using Photoshop or something like that. Who can tell where that manuscript comes from? Who can certify that it is really from Rolla? You have to trust the (anonymous) uploader. Again: this is not digital preservation, it is just damaging music knowledge.

How does it damage musical knowledge? It has the composer's name on it and as such it is clearly identifiable as being by Rolla. It is absolutely no different than trusting your (anonymous) scanners at the library.
I cannot speak for IMSLP at large and I am not trying to say we will not budge on this issue. However, I have to say that I am unconvinced by your arguments so far...

Gabriele, You're conflating two things here. An image is not an object and therefore not property (unless you're claiming it to be intellectual property), while a monochrome or color printout or copy produced from that stored image is actually an object and therefore physical property. The image is merely a representation of an actual physical object - presently stored in digital form. While you're not claiming a copyright on a public domain manuscript by a long-dead composer like Rolla, you're essentially claiming a type of "sweat of the brow" copyright upon the images of manuscripts and - even worse - old printed editions, held by the library, a government-funded institution.

There seems to be a great deal of confusion over the purpose of the library and of how to achieve its goals. While you claim that you're granting free access to the music you are in reality making what amounts to an intellectual property claim upon images made from objects owned by the library - a publicly-funded institution - and charging fees that any commercial concern would blush at. 500-plus euros for a single digital copy (not even a color print) of a single 593-page manuscript is absolutely ridiculous. Only the Rupert Murdochs of the world could afford a collection of such files.

To illustrate how completely insane the present charges are (much less the threatened four-fold increase), here is the actual cost from a printer I regularly deal with to produce 1 copy of a hardbound 480-page full-color facsimile score, measuring 216 x 280 mm (8.5 x 11 inches) = USD 54.00. Now, if we wanted to sell this 480-page color facsimile on Amazon, they insist upon a 55% discount. So, we take our print cost (what we must pay the printer for each copy) and double it (108.00) then multiply by 2.23 to come up with the retail price for Amazon: USD 240.84. If someone actually buys a copy, we keep 54.38 for the trouble. Not exactly cheap, but nowhere near 500 euros either. It's as if the Milan Conservatory Library is pretending to be Universal Edition Milano. IMSLP-EU is correct. The model Milan Conservatory Library is operating under is completely unworkable.

Dear Gabriele,

A few points to add to the previous posters:

I think you and some of the library administrators have their priorities mixed up: You ask for voluntary restraint from contributors to imslp - but you can be sure commercial outfits that sell pirated pdf's will mine your offerings as well, and the higher your fees are, the better their business. If scores are available for free on a well known site like imslp, the pirates at least will be almost out of business... (this happened even in the past with paper copies, have a look at the scan of Krommer Op.71 autograph, which I purchased(!) in the US: I could identify the correct source, I-Mc, only by searching internet culturale and matching the catalog numbers present on the copy)

My interest is in chambermusic for performance, and it is impossible to perform from the current screen views, so for me printing out parts of a work is not "fetishism": Actually, I have obtained paper copies from the Milan Conservatoire in the past - for quite reasonable fees - and find it difficult to understand how fast fees are being increased: Even a commercial reproduction business would be able to undercut those exorbitant fees! At 500 euros for a pdf of an opera score, only few desperate people with deep pockets or a very large research grant will be able to afford your offers.

I think at the moment the "Nutzungsbedingungen" at SBB (only in german) offer an interesting model for other libraries (and at the moment almost all of their offerings are also paid for by users that requested custom digitizations - 30 cents per 300dpi color scan from page 10 of an entire order): They allow non-commercial use of their scans for free and recently added that they actually encourage the presentation of their holdings on other internet portals (I assume that includes imslp), if the origin of the scans is clearly identified. Commercial users have to apply for permission and pay fees. They claim some sort of "CC-attribution-non-commercial" license for their scans, which may be relevant in the EU but difficult to enforce around the world - so I am not quite sure how well this will work to generate income, but it will somewhat discourage reselling of the scans.

To the administrators at the Milan conservatory it may also be relevant that some of the costs of a conservatory library (repurchasing popular works that suffer from wear & tear) are being reduced by the free offerings from Sibley, Russian state library etc. etc and also from imslp, if students can download the scores for free.

Given the current financial problems in Italy this may be a bad time to apply for funds, but the holdings at Milan conservatory are an important part of the Italian cultural heritage, so there may be funds (public or private) for digitization projects available in the future (and I hope SBB in Berlin will also soon find funds to digitize more of their holdings...)

Hi Philidor,

Are you certain? If Rupert Murdoch woke up tomorrow and donated €10,000,000 to the Milan Conservatory Library, you'd be obliged, under Italian law, to return the cheque? I truly hope we can reach agreement on this. It's a great shame to place huge costs between musicians and public domain music manuscripts.

I'm 90% sure that if Mr. Murdoch decides to donate €10,000,000 to the Milan Conservatory (the Library is not a separate entity), we should ask him to convert his money in something we need. He can buy and donate us new music instruments, books, refurbishing of the concert hall, a new heating system, a new building, create a foundation to promote music teaching, what else, but we can't accept his money.

If you are worried about a way to help the library, it is quite easy: buy some pages from an already digitized document...

Bye
Gabriele

Dear all,

just a last explanation about the way the reproduction of documents process works here, because it seems that most of you imagines life of a librarian being similar to a bookseller's one:

1) I usually get an email from someone asking if we have "some music from composer xy" (it seems, unfortunately, that just a few people in the world are able to search on online catalogues). Then some time is spent to individuate what the person is really looking for.
2) once the score is individuated, I verify the integrity of the document, and also the corresponding record in the catalogue: as I have the music in my hands, it is good time for verifying the description, that frequently is outdated and sometimes missing at all.
3) if the person interested in the music decides to pay for the reproduction, he can pay with credit card or by bank transfer. In Italy, most of the people, unfortunately, pay by bank transfer. This means that I must inform the administrative office to verify the payment and wait for a reply.
4) once I know that the reproduction has been paid, I have to inform a specific office of the ministry that I'm sending out of the library a document for reproduction purposes
5) obviously, an insurance has to be stipulated before the transport, and the transport coordinated
6) document arrives at the digitization laboratory where it is scanned
7) images are sent to the user who requested the reproduction and to the person responsible for the metadata creation
8 ) while metadata are prepared, the document comes back to the library. I verify its state and inform the ministry's office that the document is safe back at home
9) once metadata are completed, another person loads the document in the digital library and drop me an email
10) I verify that the document is online as it should and update the online catalogue accordingly.

This is the process, in fact simplified a little. All of this work is "out of budget" and has to be paid in some way. Is the library asking too much money? I don't know, this process is surely expensive, but can't be different (suggestions I've read here are really naive, sorry) and we are just worried to collect money enough to repay it.

Once, at the end of the first official year of service, we realize that we are in advance, we'll reduce the fee: we are not doing business (we are not allowed to do a business), we just have to repay expense.

So, someone has paid to have the reproduction of a document and at the end the document is online, freely viewable. Do you think we should apply different fees for already digitized material? We decided that the cost has to be equally distributed between the first person asking for the reproduction and the followers. As soon as we can reduce the fee, it will be reduced for both.

Now: you too are interested in the reproduced document and you find it online, as someone else has paid for it. You can buy it by the library. If it is too expensive for you, you can transcribe it. If you prefer, of course, you can spend some time with copy and paste of the images, it is up to you, it is your time and your money.
But what happens if you upload to Petrucci the PDF created mining out the images from our digital library? Nobody will pay to get it from us (be honest: any fee is more expensive than free) and we'll have to raise and raise again our fees for new requests of reproductions as we get no income. The end of this vicious circle is our digital library requiring a fee just for viewing the images.

Please note: I'm not here to discuss my library's policy with you. I'm just informing you about the consequences of the actions of some of you. I consider really unfair and inappropriate the activity by Generoso and others. I think they are also doing something illegal, but it would be childish claiming international lawyer actions, as the Milan Conservatory can't afford them. For sure, Generoso and people like him are in the long term preventing new material from going online (so, he is not "generoso" at all in the long term!)
Now, do what your conscience tell you...

@ KGill

How does it damage musical knowledge? It has the composer's name on it and as such it is clearly identifiable as being by Rolla. It is absolutely no different than trusting your (anonymous) scanners at the library.

I hope you are joking! Or do you really think that if you find a composer's name on a manuscript, that name is always right? And maybe do you think also that any manuscript has the composer's name on it? Do you think that cataloguing a musical manuscript just means copying what is on the frontispiece?

Sorry, it seems the information level here is dramatically lower than I expected: -(

I communicated you what I intended and I will not able to reply more as in a few days I'll leave Milan for a music librarians conference in Dublin (paying out of my own pocket as my institution can't contribute with a cent: imagine how much we are enriching with our expensive fees!) and while there I'll try to understand if my library is the only one having problems with Petrucci or not. I don't know if I'll have time to participate again in this discussion once I'm back; in any case I always answer any PM I receive. You can find my email address here: http://www.consmilano.it/index.php?id=367

All the best
Gabriele