IMSLP Forums

Can I contribute an entirely non-copyrighted original composition?

Thanks

The short answer is: Probably not.

The reason is that you may not fully understand what deliberately committing a work to the public domain means - and that it also means different things in different countries. In the USA, for example, once you deliberately declare your work to be "public domain", you give up all rights of any kind associated with that work - even the right of simple attribution to the correct author, which is treated as an inalienable "moral right" in other countries' laws.

If some hotshot movie producer finds your "public domain" piece on IMSLP, lists himself as the composer, and then makes a gazillion dollars, how would you react? Also, how would your family and heirs react down the road? IMSLP could potentially he held liable because you might not have known in full what "public domain" actually entails. This is why we really prefer that new items be listed under one of the Creative Commons licenses.

And how do you go about getting one of those?

It could not be simpler. Just go to the correct page on the main site in the "Contributor Portal", choose one of the versions offered (there are 4) and put that version in the "Copyright" field when you upload files instead of "public domain."

Yes, but how to I get the license? Do I have to fill something out? Pay for it?


Thanks

No, just append a notice of CC on the work.

I use http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ for my compositions (though I haven't put a score any where yet - I will when I get it looking well enough however)
These may help:
http://creativecommons.org/license/
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ#Can ... ne_work.3F

Thank you for your inquiry - it means that we have not documented this enough in our documentation. So you choose a license, make a notice of this, and just submit your files.

Btw, It would be wise to actually put a notice of these licenses IN the pdf, and not only in the IMLSP entry. People never seem to do this. The reason is that you can be 100% sure your file will start a journey on the net, whether that's illegal or not.

Also, it'd be nice to tell about yourself and your permission on your user page, to prevent confusion.

Age_of_Anxiety wrote:Yes, but how to I get the license? Do I have to fill something out? Pay for it?

To briefly explain a bit more...

A Creative Commons License is not a license you need to purchase (or obtain!) for the right to use it; it's a license that the Creative Commons (Foundation? Group? Anyway...) has created for anyone to use with their own work as a way to help users better apply copyright law the way they wish to, as opposed to the standard "All Rights Reserved", which is the default. By doing so, these licenses can serve as a "standard" that allows more sharing of creative works without all the messy details like lawyers.

I strongly suggest you read the http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses page first, so that you understand what each portion does.

Myself, I use CC-BY-SA, which means Creative Commons - Attribution - Share Alike ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ )