No problem, green imp. I'm truly not offended by questions regarding the longevity and insurance that the intent and purpose for IMSLP remains intact.
Those questions should be there. To be clear, I wanted to point those who are interested to the public domain web site and wiki that I've been running for a couple years. I've finally switched it over to the new server and re-configured it. My personal motivations and purpose should be fairly clear from there.
I'm very glad to see Kevin's offer of support here. In response, I wish like to make an important point about the copyright status of what appeared on IMSLP:
Apart from the cases where creators or their hiers posted their own works (usually under one of the Creative Commons Licenses) and the works hosted on the now-defunct US server (a moot point as it will not be revived), all of the works posted at IMSLP were public domain in Canada - either through the natural expiry of copyright term or because they were works (like urtext editions) which failed to meet the "threshold of originality" needed to qualify for copyright status under Canadian law. IMSLP employed the most extensive copyright review and tagging system of its kind on the net. The dispute with Universal was not about the copyright status of works in Canada, but about the fact that scans of certain works which are still protected in the EU were downloadable by users from the EU - despite all the warnings in place about copyright status. We did not even attempt to account for any of the fair use exemptions which are present under EU statutes, but simply included a "download at your own risk" warning.
The threat from Universal's attorneys was that they would seek to enforce a default judgement against IMSLP made in a EU court against Feldmahler personally. This threat is based on two presumptions: 1) That an EU court would rule that IMSLP/Feldmahler was infringing upon UE's copyrights and was hence liable for damages; 2) That a Canadian court would then be willing to enforce said judgement upon Feldmahler, a Canadian citizen. Neither of these comes anything close to being a certainty. However, despite Canada's remarkably clean and logical copyright law in comparison to that of the USA, Canadian courts have been considerably more symapthetic to the enforcement of rulings from EU magistrates than their US counterparts.
That is the nutshell version of the legal dispute that whoever takes legal responsibility for IMSLP would be getting into. I completely agree with the need to establish some sort of corporate identity for IMSLP, for that is the best shield available for liability. Feldmahler (or any of us) should not have to put ourselves personally at risk every time an ossified music publisher gets the notion that someone downloading a low-res scan of a score is somehow depriving them of a sale. (It actually might encourage a sale, but some rarely if ever see it that way.)
And yet, the intentions of a not for profit board can be as self serving as that of a for profit board or corporate owner. There are plenty of examples of that in Canada and elsewhere.
For the owners still need to be paid for there efforts... that can be exploited.
Carolus, what pieces would IMSLP lose from getting rid of the US server (Apart from Stravinsky)?
The loss would be significantly more than Stravinsky or Villa-Lobos, including arrangements and transcriptions of public domain works. I'm sure something will be worked out with Gutenberg USA to ensure works that are PD in the US stay in the US, but as they point out, let's take things in priority ensuring the main site goes and stays up first.
