Proposals, Ideas, Suggestions, etc

[aslsp-fl]

Please note that the difference between life+50 or life+70 is not only a money problem. For a minute, try to imagine being Schubert and not being able to set to music Goethe's poems because Goethe's publisher asks you an absurd fee, or even refuses to gives you permission because he thinks Goethe's poems are worth a better musicians. This is exactly what is happening now, that contemporary musicians may be cut off from important sources of inspiration just because the copyright machine prevents it.

Again, I am not anticopyright - I get money for performances of my works. To solve the case above, it could be possible to set up a compulsory licence system, say, after 20 years from original publication date. - But the real problem of copyright protection is setting the balance between conflicting interests. No copyright, no money for composers, bad - too much copyright is stopping future culture advancements, bad - we must strike the balance in an intermediate point.

[dolhuis]

If anything is clear, it's that no single solution is going to cover all eventualities. One size won't fit all, but if a way can be find to get one size to fit the vast majority with only minimal inconvenience it'll be useful.

I think IMSLP argues it has done that already . They had the one size that fits the vast majority: host only that what is legal for them to host, and warn everybody that in certain cases for them downloading might be illegal.

Any attempt to enforce anything will open a can of worms of haggling ("Yes, I'm in Europe, but in my country it is legal to download this for study and private use, so please adjust your enforcement." "Yes I'm in Europe, but in my country for some works copyright is life+75, so please adjust your enforcement" etc.)

Any attempt to enforce anything will open a floodgate to being forced to enforce everything ("By enforcing UE's wishes, you are implicitly stating that you're responsible for how your site is being used by users in other countries, since you're responsible you need to enforce that in our country users are banned from seeing work in the category life+100, because whe just leapfrogged Europe and US." "In our country composers Y and Z have been deemed Formalistic (or Entartet, or Western, or Christian, choose what you (dis)like), please make sure that people in our country cannot download copies of their music anymore" "Oh by the way, the ban on Formalistic composers has been lifted by the party, it's now OK for people in our country to download their music, but not in sattelite state X where they still are banned." etc.)

Either you're responsible for nothing on the user's side, or indiscriminately to anything. Weighing those two options, there is only one working solution...

[emeraldimp]

Again, I am not anticopyright - I get money for performances of my works. To solve the case above, it could be possible to set up a compulsory licence system, say, after 20 years from original publication date. - But the real problem of copyright protection is setting the balance between conflicting interests. No copyright, no money for composers, bad - too much copyright is stopping future culture advancements, bad - we must strike the balance in an intermediate point.

Not necessarily so... while copyright may serve as an incentive (a strong, legal incentive) to give money for performances/etc, no copyright doesn't automatically translate into no money for composers. It may or may not, depending on a number of factors. My point is it's incorrect to assume that the only solution to the problem is copyright; it's merely ONE solution.

[Blouis79]

OK, I have a concrete suggestion for a way out of this impasse.

[...]
WARNING: this work is still under copyright protection in some territories of the world, including the European Union and the USA. If you live in these territories you will be breaking the law by downloading it! Please click on the appropriate text below.

I am in a territory in which this music is no longer under copyright protection. Please proceed to download the file.

I am in a territory in which the music is still under copyright protection. Please return me to the IMSLP home page.

I guess that can't be too difficult to program. But is self-incrimination a strong enough safeguard? That's really a question that UE and its publisher colleagues must answer, and it's understandable if they want to give it a little thought. It's likely that legal precedent will be set here. [...][/img]

Reading the legal blogs of Michael Geist and Howard Knopf and the case of LSUC vs CCH (see short thread below)
viewtopic.php?p=3712#3712
..the precedent has already been set in Canadian law.

I think something like the warnings above would probably suffice.

[aldona]

For a minute, try to imagine being Schubert and not being able to set to music Goethe's poems because Goethe's publisher asks you an absurd fee, or even refuses to gives you permission because he thinks Goethe's poems are worth a better musicians. This is exactly what is happening now, that contemporary musicians may be cut off from important sources of inspiration just because the copyright machine prevents it.

That is indeed a sobering and disturbing thought...that if copyright law existed then as it exists now, many of the classical works that we know and love would not even exist.

And what about the practice, so common in the classical and romantic periods, of paying respect or homage to a composer by writing such things as "Variations on a Theme By _______", "Fantasia on a Theme by _______", etc? What would the copyright lawyers do with such attempts today?

Certainly gives us a lot to think about.

Aldona

[Vivaldi]

Hi, Aldona
I agree with you. Another example is Beethoven's 9th symphony. Even if both versions published by Dover (an earlier Max Unger edition and the more recent but crappy Litolff edition) are PD, what would happen if somebody out of the blue claims copyright to Schiller's poem "Ode to Joy"? Very unlikely to happen but possible given the current situation and the precedences set by publishers. I fear that this debate will just rage on and on with no light at the end of the tunnel.

[HonkyTonk]

I confess that I haven't read every contribution to this forum so I apologise if anybody has expressed similar thoughts to those which follow.
One of the big attractions of the IMSLP site was that it made available many scores which were almost impossible to obtain otherwise. I found the site while trying to trace the Moszkowski Valse op.88, a work I had been trying to find a copy of for several years. I was also delighted to find a scan of the Pabst Eugene Onegin paraphrase which is not available from the publishers of the original edition (now represented by Rahter) in any form other than a simplified edition.
If UE, and indeed any other publisher of composers' works still in copyright which they have allowed to go out of print, are really sincere about their duties of disseminating the music of such composers, could they not set up their own websites in which users could download files of out-of-print music at reasonable prices? At the moment musicians can only own copies of these works by getting them through second-hand dealers if lucky (and the publishers get nothing from this!) or purchasing, at some trouble, expensive archive copies from the publisher. By advertising their archive on-line I would hazard a guess that the publishers would attract more revenue than they at present do from isolated requests for archive copies. You only have to look at the interest ISMLP attracted to see the potential for this. Maybe they could act in co-operation with something like ISMLP to create a giant repository of scores both public domain (free download) and copyright so that all could pool their expertise in ensuring that copyright infringements (either deliberate or unwitting) don't occur.

[Corno Dolce]

Not just copyright infringements but also copyfraud!!!

[greyphi]

I think that the IMSLP main site should continue under the restricting rules allowing it to reopen it's doors. The contested files should be moved into a non-public folder for the time being until the legal issues are resolved.

I do have a few non-public dedicated servers in Canada and would like to upload the contested files. I do hope they don't get mixed in with my fully legit torrent shares....

No Canadian laws would be broken.