Do we have any lawyers in the copyright review or IMSLP

[kcleung]

Hi,

At this stage, do we have lawyers (or at least with legal qualification in any countries) in the copyright review team or in the IMSLP admin?

Should we advertise these volunteering positions in law schools? The students can claim these volunteering positions as job experience in their CVs..............

kcleung

[pml]

I'm not a lawyer, and have absolutely no intention, let alone interest in becoming one. I was forced into a closer acquaintance with the insanity of international copyright law when in 2002 I edited some Schönberg (est mort, as Boulez said, all the way back in 1951). At the time I consulted some lawyers - in retrospect, admittedly none of whom had the proper depth of international copyright and IP law, in addition to specific musical knowledge of exactly "what" had been copyrighted - and got two or three different, and confusing, pieces of advice. Hence for many years I suppressed the edition. You can still see the rather strange copyright notice I posted in the score circa 2003/04, which basically stated that my work couldn't be used outside Australia.

My current belief is that the work is in the public domain in Australia, the US, and Canada, and so I decided the time was right to post it here. As far as I know the original work is copyright in the EU until 2022.

Unfortunately my nation's previous regime (which was kicked out at the last election, and not before time) shortly after that point in time signed into law a 20 year copyright extension as part of a free trade agreement with the US, so my sympathies are strongly with those who opposed the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act in the United States.

Regards, Philip

PS Obligatory anti-lawyer joke (as a change to the various musician jokes that go around):

Q. What's the difference between a lawyer and a sperm?

A. A sperm has a one-in-three hundred million chance of becoming a human being.

[Yagan Kiely]

^^Hehe

(which was kicked out at the last election, and not before time)

This one (though better) is only just better. I mean what percentage of the population is against the Filter? Oh and is our regime still pushing it? Oh and has it been proved completely and utterly counter-productive to what it (claims) to do?

/rant over.