Advise on sharing

[Jeffrie]

a friend of mine passed on and left me a couple 1TB hard drives of music. I do not know the status
of this music as he was an avid collector of albums. One thing on one of the drives is everything Mozart composed. I mean everything. The music is in MP3 format and in the Mozart folder is 5.6 gig of his work. My question would be, am I able to share this with you here? I do not know about the rights. My friend acquired a lot of music. A lot is classical which I am most fond of. We are talking major amounts And a large collection of composers.


Thank you

Jeffrie

[Philidor]

It sounds highly illegal to me.

I do not know about the rights.

That's the problem. Unless they're recordings from a provable out-of-copyright source, e.g. The European Archive, anyone placing them online could be in for a heap of trouble.

[Jeffrie]

The files and folders are nice and neat. Like they were ripped from the CD's. Here is a file that came in the folder. Someone had to scan the covers so I don't know what to think. states they are scanned. hard to believe they weren't purchased by someone.

*******************************************************************************
Complete Mozart Edition (45 Volumes)
*******************************************************************************

******************PART 1/3************************

Vol 01 Early symphonies (Marriner)
Vol 02 Symphonies (Marriner)
Vol 03 Serenades for Orchestra (Marriner)
Vol 04 Divertimenti (St Martin in the Field's Chamber Ensemble)
Vol 05 Serenades and Divertimenti for Wind (Marriner, Laird, de Waart)
Vol 06 Dances and Marches (Boskovsky)
Vol 07 Piano Concertos (Brendel, Marriner)
Vol 08 Violin Concertos (Szeryng, Gibson a.o.)
Vol 09 Wind Concertos (Marriner, Holliger)
Vol 10 Quintets Quartets etc (St Martin in the Field's Chamber Ensemble)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
General Information
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Type.................: Music
Platform.............: win 95/98/2000/nt/xp/2003/vista, mac, linux
Int. Release.........: Oct. 2000

Files information:
Audio #0
Codec : MPEG-1 Audio layer 3
Codec profile : Joint stereo
Bit rate : 192 Kbps
Bit rate mode : CBR
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 44 KHz
Resolution : 16 bits
Writing library : Xing (old)


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Release Notes
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Everything Mozart ever composed. His complete works played by various artists and orchestras.

In 45 volumes and 180 CDs. Each volume is zipped as a rar file. Simply use Winrar or another
similar program to unzip after downloading.

Music files are in MP3 format @ 192kbps quality.

Cover art and booklets are scanned as jpg picture files.

Hope you enjoy the music. Long live Mozart!



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Description
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The legendary Philips edition - The Complete Compact Mozart Edition is reissued in time for the 2006 anniversary.
Originally released in 2001, this 180-CD collection contains Mozart's complete oeuvre and has proven to be the most
successful edition in the history of the recording industry. The massive undertaking of
recording the 45 volumes was preceded by years of preparation and included many recordings of pieces that had never
previously seen the light of day! The hard labour, love and devotion that had been put
into this brave and ambitious project would never have been possible without the inspiration that the world's
most beloved composer had given to so many of the people involved.

[Philidor]

That looks like the Philips complete Mozart edition published 1990-1. (Amazon currently has one used copy for sale @ $3,688.88.) IMSLP should have nothing to do with your hard drive copy.

[Jeffrie]

IMSLP should have nothing to do with your hard drive copy.

Condemn first before knowing the facts? I"m a little shocked by your statement. I guess thinking the lesser of a man before knowing is the way now? I'm glad I'm not judgmental. Like I said, my friend was a collector of music.He died neither poor nor a crook. Who's to say what I have on the drive ISN'T legitimate?? And what he has is the Phillips collection! All I need to do is contact his children to see what box sets they have. I should have stated he had a large collection on disc as well. Also found the complete collection from several other famous composers.

I'll retract my offer either way. There is folders of sheet music in there too. I remember playing a few when I was in the symphony.

[Philidor]

IMSLP should have nothing to do with your hard drive copy.

Condemn first before knowing the facts? I"m a little shocked by your statement. I guess thinking the lesser of a man before knowing is the way now? I'm glad I'm not judgmental. Like I said, my friend was a collector of music.He died neither poor nor a crook. Who's to say what I have on the drive ISN'T legitimate?? And what he has is the Phillips collection! All I need to do is contact his children to see what box sets they have. I should have stated he had a large collection on disc as well. Also found the complete collection from several other famous composers.

I'll retract my offer either way. There is folders of sheet music in there too. I remember playing a few when I was in the symphony.

I don't want to cause offence. But you requested advice, I gave advice. On the information you provided I don't see how anyone could legally upload a ripped copy of this CD collection to the internet. The Phillips legal department would have kittens. The ISP could face a cease & desist notice. They'd then pass their displeasure to the domain name owner, who'd probably be in breach of the copyright section of the terms of service agreement he signed with the ISP.

But please don't do anything rash. Others may be along with different advice.

[Jeffrie]

That is something I find hard to understand. If someone purchased it, they should be able to do with
it as they see fit.

Now I can see uploading to a hard drive to preserve. Then back to the first, if it was purchased by the ripper, how can their legal dept have any say? or the ISP for that matter? If this is the case, then they need to start putting labels on the covers, 'it is illegal to upload content to any storage device"

I've to find any kind of tag or file pertaining to the rights. To tell you the truth, I've ripped music before and all that comes of it is the music. If there is such a stink about copyrights, they should take precautions. My opinion of course.

This all over wanting to share great music with others. What is this world coming too?

EDIT: The next thing will be when playing my bass where others can hear, I will get fined for playing someone else's music

[steltz]

If your friend purchased it, then in his will he can give the originals to anyone he wants. In such a case, if the backup goes to the same person, that would be OK. But if the backup goes to a second person, then the people involved in the recording lose the sale of the second CD. I know of ripped recordings of an orchestra I played with sold illegally, without the orchestra or its members receiving one single cent, and I can tell you that stinks too. The orchestra was eventually liquidated for lack of money, some of which would have been there had it not been for illegally copied CDs.

Backing up your own private collection is one thing, but when other people are able to access your backup without buying the CDs themselves, it amounts to theft. This is the core of the issue.

If your friend has the CDs that these recordings came from, he can give those to anyone he wants in his will. But all of these recordings are protected by copyright -- indeed many of the musicians are still alive, and are supposed to be earning income from these recordings, as is their right to do.

I don't know the status of downloads that are purchased, and how one proves that the ownership of the recording was bought. Perhaps someone else could advise on that aspect of this type of item in a will.

If your friend didn't own the CDs that the recordings came from, and also didn't purchase the downloads (i.e. if he ripped the contents of other peoples' CDs), then the contents of the hard drive are illegal to own. That goes for him and for you.

Please don't blame anyone at IMSLP. This is the law. And as nasty as you might think it is, believe me, the musicians that are denied their rightful income because you are "ripping" our rights away from us, think it's even nastier, and very hard to stomach.

[Philidor]

@ Jeffrie: the Magnatune position may interest you, and Courtney Love's June 2000 cry of rage. All I can do is support copyright reform but, until that happens, help keep IMSLP lawyer-proof.

[Odin]

Jeffrie

I - being a Pirate Party member - share your opinion at least.

Your intention to share these files with us is unfortunately illegal
right now, but the Pirate Party thinks that it should be legalized,
since Mozarts copyright has expired many years ago.

The copyright protection which applies right now to your collection
and which prohibits you from using it freely after your will is a
typical example of an illegitime copyright, since it does actually
not protect the creators (Mozarts) interests but the interests of
other (less important and less creative) people who did not write
these compositions themselves.

I think you should join the Pirate Party of your country.

Regards

Odin

[steltz]

Your intention to share these files with us is unfortunately illegal right now, but the Pirate Party thinks that it should be legalized,
since Mozarts copyright has expired many years ago.

The copyright protection which applies right now to your collection and which prohibits you from using it freely after your will is a typical example of an illegitime copyright, since it does actually not protect the creators (Mozarts) interests but the interests of other (less important and less creative) people who did not write these compositions themselves.

I'm sorry, but as a musician who has been involved in doing recordings, my skill in playing my instrument is a copyrightable skill, and I think you are trampling on the rights of every recording musician the world over. It's people like you who keep playing musicians poor.

Who are you to say we shouldn't earn money from using our (considerable) skills to record Mozart's (or anyone else's, for that matter) music?