IMSLP Forums

I am the librarian for a community orchestra. Since our members are volunteers and frequently come and go, we don't hand out original purchased parts, but instead scan the parts to a PDF and let each player print their own parts from our password protected website. We purchase or rent all of our music unless it is in public domain and available on the IMSLP site. Frequently there are scores in IMSLP for a piece, but not the individual orchestral parts. Does this mean that the piece is in fact public domain but that the parts have just not as yet been uploaded by anyone? If a piece is in public domain, and we have access to the parts from another orchestra, can we then borrow the parts and scan and print them just as if they had been on the IMSLP website? Any clarification you can give on this topic would be greatly appreciated.

You have to become familiar with the law in your country before you can decide what to download, and it isn't a good idea to assume that because something is here, you can use it.

For example, my orchestra is currently renting a work that is on IMSLP, because the editor is covered in the country where I live, but he isn't covered in Europe or the US. So even though it is available for download, it would be illegal for us to do that.

Have a look at these two pages:

http://imslp.org/wiki/Public_domain

http://imslp.org/wiki/IMSLP:Copyright_Made_Simple

Generally speaking, the items you can purchase from the reprint houses (Kalmus and Lucks are the two major ones for parts) are very definitely public domain and eligible for adding to this archive. Kalmus does issue new editions, sometimes newly engraved and sometimes hand-corrected, with added material (the Nieweg Performance Editions, for example), but they are very good about putting a copyright notice on those particular items (no notice appears on the unedited public domain reprints). I expect Lucks is similar in practice. This is not always the case with other publishers though, as we've run into a fair number of things here where a publisher simply reprinted a 19th century score with no charges at all but put a bogus "scarecrow" copyright claim (which is actually against the law).

That's a general guideline you can use as a kind of 'rule of thumb' as long as you keep in mind that there will inevitably be cases where something is actually protected when you would normally think it's not and vice-versa.