Support for Feldmahler and IMSLP

[Ben]

To all of you that have invested your selves in this project: know there are many that will now show even more interest in this project.

By my registering here I am joining you in solidarity on your mission and declare my interest in justice being done here. The tribulation you are going through now is calling even more attention to your existence and plight. The greed of UE will only serve to show case this very fact, that they ARE greedy. This will backfire within the community of people that value music and all human knowledge. It will now be present in even more people’s minds and I will henceforth now be actively looking for ways to make UE less significant and empower IMSLP.
My humble resources and prayers join yours.

Ben

[Huixin]

I can't believe they close IMSLP~
I'm currently writing from China, I'm not sure whether you've ever realised that there're user of IMSLP in this part of the world. Yes, we love it, even though there's not yet a Chinese version, music does all the talking. I use it to find whatever score I loved, for it's so hard to find lots of them even in a professional music book store, and I introduced it to my friends, they absolutely LOVE it!
We were saying how can it be possible that such a wonderful place existed, it revived our passion to pursuit the music that is singing inside us.

I hope it won't be long before our beloved IMSLP is back.

[Yagan Kiely]

I can't be sure, but I think Feldmahler may have been aware.

Great to see, however.

[Yagan Kiely]

I was just going to IMSLP to get the piano music for Rhapsody in BLue by Gershwin and bam its gone! It's gone?!?!? NOOO! I'm 16 and I play the piano a minimum of 2 hours every day. I do not have much money so I used to get all of my piano music off of here, they had loads of good stuff. No one has a right to "own" the rights to a piece of music. It's like trying to say you own the air. Absurd! Copyright laws should prohibit copy and resale NOT copy and freesale. Please come back IMSLP! You have my support.

[johnsonfromwisconsin]

No one has a right to "own" the rights to a piece of music. It's like trying to say you own the air. Absurd! Copyright laws should prohibit copy and resale NOT copy and freesale. Please come back IMSLP! You have my support

No. This notion is absolutely absurd. Copyright is now too long in length, but you can't deny that a developer of art is entitled to a reasonable period on which to have exclusive rights to reproduction. With the ease of copying and diseminating of the internet, 'freesale' would leave creators little leverage and users little insentive to pay. I would be happy with fifty years from first publish for books, recordings, scores, etc.

[Yagan Kiely]

I personally believe in the life of the composer and that's it.

As a student, I think fair-use could be extended (I would love to be able to study modern composers without having to pay such prices for works, money which I don't have). If intended ONLY of personal study, AND you have proof of either an intended seriousness in music or similar etc. I think there should be argument made there.

[jhellingman]

I personally believe in the life of the composer and that's it.

That would cause a dangerous incentive to kill a composer

But seriously, I think we should study copyright laws, and the duration and scope of rights granted in relation to their stated purpose, that is to promote arts and science.

Furthermore, the exclusive rights are just a means, not a goal in itself. For myself, I think that we can take the actual reproduction aspect out of the scope of copyright. The thing that really counts (in causing lost sales, etc.) is public distribution of works. If we take out copying out of copyright, we loose a lot of complexity in the law, introduced by private use and other exceptions. (Which doesn't mean that somebody producing thousands of copies, with the obvious intention of distributing them couldn't be held accountable, but such operations are of declining importance in a world were copying is commonplace.).

In this discussion, we will need to take into account the way culture is build by building upon works of others, which has always been a huge source of inspiration for artists in all fields. With this, I don't mean outright copying or plagiarism, but inspiration, citation and transformative use. Another aspect will be the purely economic factor of how much time will investors actually look ahead when they make decisions about investing in works of art, and finally, we may want to look at artists emotional attachments and feelings about the integrity of their works.

From an economical point of view, no copyright beyond 50 years makes any sense, as no investor will look at returns 50 years in the future when making a feasibility study, and even if he would do so, the present-day value of such returns are a fraction of those earned on the short term. (A million after 50 years is worth 21,321 today, assuming an 8% interest rate, and very few works make a million over their entire life) Many music works in the pop-genre have a shelf-life of a few years or even months at most, and the same is true for publications in other fields.

Further, we need to look at the rights granted from the pragmatic point of few as well. We only need to make those actions exclusive as needed to enable the initial investment to be made. Rightsholders need no right to squeeze every last penny of potential benefit from their works to make that decision, just a fair chance to recoup their investment in the light of rip-off parties selling copies without the initial investment. When other parties re-use their work in a creative way, there is no rip-off, and in my opinion, no need to pay up.

The "building on shoulders of giants" aspect is very important. When people create works of art, they do not do so in isolation, but borrow from the public domain. It is only fair that they return the favor, by having their work become available to build upon as well. In a sense, we already have a "Public Domain Payante" in the sense that you pay the PD when your works become part of it.

The artists emotional attachments to his works can be treated separately from the economical aspects, and typically limits itself to proper attribution, and right of first publication. However, once your place your mind's baby in the world, it will grow up and have a life of itself.

[Odin]

Hello

Once I was blamed on this site for introducing a political debate about copyright and about changes in the legislation. I did this as a sympathizer - not a party member ! - of the Swedish Pirate Party. Now other people here seem to discuss the same issue, just without mentioning the growing political piracy movement. In the pirate parties there is a lot of debate about how the copyright laws should be limited and changed, and why, and how the creative art workers can be promoted and supported in the future.

Regards from

[Yagan Kiely]

No! No-one blamed you for that. Conversation on the subject can be conducted, the only thing wrong (not even wrong.... but I'll go with that for now) with your posts, is that it possibly focused too much on the political side (while still important) rather than IMSLP. And I think most people thought (you could call is selfishly, but considering where we are, probably not) that IMSLP is more important right now. I think most people agreed whole-heartedly with what you said (mostly) just it was thought to be of lessor importance, especially considering these facts:

1: it would mean 70+ restrictions on IMSLP
2: it would take a while for the party to actually do as much as is necessary.

[emeraldimp]

Actually, while I fully support the discussion that's occurring here, I DO think it should be moved to another, more relevant (new?) thread (this thread IS "Support for Feldmahler and IMSLP", after all).

[Odin]

Hello

Actually, while I fully support the discussion that's occurring here, I DO think it should be moved to another, more relevant (new?) thread (this thread IS "Support for Feldmahler and IMSLP", after all).

I agree. This issue should be discussed seperately under the item copyright, not under the item announcements..

Regards

[jhellingman]

Once I was blamed on this site for introducing a political debate about copyright and about changes in the legislation. I did this as a sympathizer - not a party member ! - of the Swedish Pirate Party. Now other people here seem to discuss the same issue, just without mentioning the growing political piracy movement. In the pirate parties there is a lot of debate about how the copyright laws should be limited and changed, and why, and how the creative art workers can be promoted and supported in the future.

I have been doing the same, on purpose, with the idea of building understanding for the need of copyright reform with groups of people (composers and musicians) that have a big interests in the matter. They find themselves at both the receiving and paying end of copyright, so for them, understanding the balance is important.

Many of the Pirate Parties seem (on first look, careful reading of their programs will reveal a different position) to focus on legalizing file-sharing, especially contemporary popular songs and movies, which I think is one of few things even the most far-fetching copyright reform (apart from complete abolishment of copyright) will probably not be able to allow, since sharing a pop-song on a publicly available server (your computer at home) is a non-transformative distribution to the public of a very recent work. Such proposals will not gain much popularity with most people here. (Although you may like to compare the popular music market with the fashion market, which thrives healthily without much of copyright restrictions, and has with it in common that it is relatively cheap to produce a piece of music, and musicians are inspired by each other a lot -- things that do not hold in the movie industry, with its multi-million dollar budgets)

I have sympathy with the pirate party movement, but consider them to be one-issue parties, that address an issue that has limited relevance for most voters. I think for this reason, it is more important to get copyright reform on the agenda of main-stream parties.

The other point of discussion here is how to get IMSLP back ASAP, working within the current copyright situation. Since both I and Odin are located in a life+70 jurisdiction, there is little we can do to help here.

[pisanojm]

Hello Feldmahler and imslp.org,

I've been an active user and advocate of imslp.org for a number of months and am very unhappy to hear about the issues you are having keeping your site active.

I wanted to let you know that I and the people at mustech.net would like to extend any help that we can to you or those that you would deem as responsible as taking over the site from you all.

Please let us know what we can do to help. You can contact us via the contact page of our site and I will get back to you all as promptly as I can.

Best wishes for CONTINUED success and thank you for your efforts for all of us!

Dr. Joseph Pisano
http://www.mustech.net

[jvdhout]

Hi there,

As a musicologist i think it is a big loss that the IMSLP has been closed. I know the basics of copyright, music and computers to offer the following:

I would like to reopen the IMSLP on my own account and turn the site into a completely legal music site (which is not that hard, because the site was already for about 98% legal.)

I have some other classical music projects which I all undertake as a private person, however, i think it is best to form a foundation for this site to guarantee publication of public domain scores for eternity. and make sure that all the hard volunteer work does not get lost.

[Yagan Kiely]

This site is 100% legal.

Thankyou for your offer, but it will be a last resort for IMSLP to go to a country with 70+ copyright laws instead of 50+ like where IMSLP is hosted.