Slashdot Mirror
Complete Mozart Works Now Free
An anonymous reader writes "Mozart's year-long 250th birthday party is ending on a high note with the musical scores of his complete works available for the first time free on the Internet. Although most classical music is obviously too old to be under copyright, the rights to specific editions of pieces are owned by the publishers. Now, the International Mozart Foundation has acquired the right to publish the prestigious New Mozart Edition of every Mozart work on the internet. The response has been so overwhelming that the Foundation has been forced to increase their server capacity."
Are you sure it isn't the Slashdot effect???
Damn straight, information wants to be free!
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
And now they're going to have to increase them again...
Can you download the music files also? If so, where are the links?
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
and they will find a way for one of their members to place it under Copyright so anyone using Mozart's music could and would face lawsuits.
They finally finished reassembling him, eh? And he creates new works without charging a penny, eh?? EXCELLENT!
I now command the recently re-animated corpse of Mozart to pen me a symphony, with no expectation of compensation! POST-HASTE!
The news article doesn't link to the site but has a link to the Amazon boxed set. Why aren't they using bit torrent? The site is a UI disaster. It's unclear how to find actual music.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
Probably not, but... okay, weirdest non-porn torrent ever?
Don't bother trying to get in with Konquerer. Holy mis-rendering Batman!
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
So does this mean I can download Falco's stuff without legal issues now? :)
-- If at first you don't succeed, lie!
Before anyone gets too excited -- there are plenty of public-domain editions of Mozart. This is just one particular edition that's going to be available online for free. There's actually a huge amount of PD sheed music available at Mutopia. The nice thing about the Mutopia stuff is that it's in a format that's editable using free software (Lilypond). For instance, I've taken some Mozart horn duets and arranged them so my daughter and I can play them on violin and viola. Because it's in Lilypond format, it's easy to transpose, arrange, whatever. If all you want is digital scans of PD editions, there are various sites that will let you download scans for free. One thing that seems a little goofy about the NMA thing is that they make you agree to use this web site only for personal study and not to make copies except for my personal use under "Fair Use" principles of Copyright law as defined in this license agreement. Uh ... fair use is an exception to copyright. Hell, I can copy a Britney Spears CD and call it fair use.
Find free books.
What they have put up is hardly "free"; it requires you to agree to a license agreement that limits you to "personal use" under "fair use" principles. Well, geez, you already could copy the music under those principles before.
Companies like Barereiter have been playing tricks with copyright for a long time, for example, by slightly modifying sheet music every few years with meaningless (and often, erroneous) "interpretations".
This is not how music should be treated 200 years after a composer's death, in particular in the day and age of the Internet. There is no reason why Mozart's entire body of work shouldn't be digitized and freely available with no restrictions on use at all, in a form like Project Gutenberg.
I'm sure Mozart is finally wealthy enough to where having his music in the public domain won't hurt him.
Wait? He's been dead for 215 years? Oh. Nevermind.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Great way to make a completely invalid point.
There's no question that Mozart's works are in the public domain. But performances are still copyrighted. These have just been released freely.
Cute message from the site: "NOTE: We are overvelmed by the resonance of this website. We regret any delays in accessing this site and are working on expanding our server capacities"
Worst BBC News Stories
Did anyone find it funny that underneath the article on Mozart's year long birday party that there's an article of Paris Hilton defending Britney's "party ethics"? I think those over-sexed party girls need some Mozart to calm them down.
...had too many notes.
The Slashdot effect just isn't what it used to be. This could be due to a number of factors, the main ones being a decreasing number of readers, and advances in server technology.
Rumor has it that many Slashdot users have moved to sites like Reddit and Digg. According to Alexa, Digg has seen massive growth, Reddit has seen moderate growth, and Slashdot's reach has been tapering off. I know many find Alexa's data to be suspect, but it is still worth considering.
Even low-end servers today can handle massive amounts of traffic with ease. While hundreds of hits per second could take down a 200 MHz server quite easily a few years back, it's not uncommon for even dynamically generated sites on shared hosts to barely notice a Slashdotting or even a Digging.
215 years eh? Thats gonna be some serious royalties!
-- If at first you don't succeed, lie!
Many people here seem, as expected, look more on the copyright side of the issue. The fact is, getting such an edition together is *not* easy by any stretch. That particular edition itself (Neue Mozart-Ausgabe) took 36 years (finished in 1991) to complete. Consider the amount of money that has to be paid to musicologists to do research for the 35 years. Obviously Barenreiter doesn't want to give it away for free. So the Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum *bought* the rights of online publication from Barenreiter, and of course even then there will be limits to what you can do with it. Obviously you cannot use these scans to publish and sell your own version of it. I consider Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum very very generous, and I thank them for it.
Also, the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe is NOT public domain in any sense of the word, because of the editing. As professional musicians know, editing is *not* something you suddenly decide to do, or something where you change a few notes and that's that. It is a long process where you research all evidence (including conflicting ones), and try to build an edition that the composer himself would have approved of. And for most editions (and all of the Barenreiter ones) a critical report comes with each piece; and it documents the path of research and the evidence used.
If you want truly public domain Mozart scores, try the Alte Mozart-Ausgabe (the old complete edition), which is completely in the public domain, with partial scans if it circulating around the net. Though, if you checked on wikipedia, you'll realize how big a difference there is between the Alte and Neue Mozart-Ausgabes.
If it were possible to remix the scores, I would imagine that they would be all for it.
No one "forced" anyone to do anything.
these folks are just nice!
HOORAY!!!
Not just performances though, but publications of the sheet music.
It's interesting that this topic came up on Slashdot. Earlier today I was reading a question on Ask Metafilter about this very site, regarding downloading some of their files as PDFs.
It seems as though they present the PDFs using some sort of weird PHP interface that discourages downloading and saving them.
It's also worth pointing out that the scores are not really 'free' in the free-software sense, they're released under a fairly restrictive license that they are claiming applies to the scanned images of the scores, independent of the scores themselves (which should be in the public domain). I tend to agree with the MeFi-er that this claim is spurious, at least in the U.S., since simply scanning a document isn't enough of a creative act to put it under a new copyright. It seems more like a collection of recipes or other non-copyrightable or public domain material.
At any rate, it would be interesting to see if Slashdotters can have any more success figuring out a way to download the PDF files than the folks on MeFi did.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
+5 Informative
Quick -- copies to the Unrefined Musician!
Usually I love this base64-encoded stuff, but what the fuck? It's some code from some website in another language. Mod parent sideways.
This story is music to my ears.
Mozart was considered a genius, by people we consider geniuses. This is definitely something to checkout.
Have you read my journal today?
"I agree to use this web site only for personal study and not to make copies except for my personal use under "Fair Use" principles of Copyright law as defined in this license agreement." Doesn't sound very free to me.
...and that is all I have to say about that.
http://jessta.id.au
They admit the works of Mozart are in the public domain but not the scanned images of the music.
They admit $400,000 was paid to purchase the rights to the edition, which is being put online "for free" by two foundations, but they still require that anybody not accessing solely for themselves (and I would assume this includes teachers and orchestras in this too) may not use it, but instead must purchase from a "authorized" vendor.
These are not nice people who from one side of their mouths say they are doing a public service while from the other side they force you to lie basically, if you want to share it with others. People who pay for the rights to publish online and say they are a foundation (perhaps with tax breaks?) however choose to manufacture this crazy idea that "Mozart's works" can mean something other than sheet music on paper.
I haven't seen info about Lilypond on their site, nor that they are encouraging or allowing rearrangement. It seems more likely that some people in the organization are altruistic and others are quite nasty and warping the project.
Someone should press them to put a creative commons liscense on it or just make it free.
The past year was Mozart's anniversary and to commemorate it these jerks are claiming title. If they really want to share Mozart they should free the scores and pay orchestras to perform it for an online repository like one that was recently featured. Then they could get around to soliciting free translations of the site, providing scholarly info to the wikipedia, networking mozart scholars and performers, etc. I am quite skeptical of this. That said of course I'm going to check out their sheet music and compare to others when I get a chance perhaps someone more expert can actually talk about this area.
I once had a whim and I had to obey it,
To buy a French horn in a second-hand shop.
I polished it up and I started to play it,
In spite of the neighbours who begged me to stop.
To sound my horn,
I had to develop my embouchure.
I found my horn,
Was a bit of a devil to play.
So artfully wound,
To give you a sound,
A beautiful sound,
So rich and round.
Oh the hours I had to spend,
Before I mastered it in the end.
But that was yesterday.
And just today,
I looked in the usual place.
There was the case,
But the horn itself was missing!
Oh where can it have gone?
Haven't you, hasn't anyone seen my horn?
Oh where can it have gone?
What a blow, now I know,
I'm unable to play my Allegro.
Who swiped that horn?
I bet you a quid somebody did.
Knowing I found a concerto,
And wanted to play it,
Afraid of my talent at playing the horn.
For early today to my utter dismay,
It had vanished away like the dew in the morn.
I've lost that horn!
I know I was using it yesterday.
I've lost that horn, lost that horn,
Found that horn
Gorn.
There's not much hope of getting it back,
Though I'd willingly pay a reward.
I know some hearty folk,
Whose party joke's pretending to hunt with the Quorn.
Gone away, gone away.
Was it one of them who took it away?
Will you kindly return that horn?
Where is the devil who pinched my horn?
I shall tell the police!
I want that French horn back.
I miss its music more and more and more.
Without that horn I'm feeling sad and so forelorn.
I found a concerto and wanted to play it,
Displaying my talent at playing the horn.
But early today to my utter dismay,
It had totally vanished away.
I practised the horn and I wanted to play it,
But somebody took it away!
I practised the horn and was longing to play it,
But somebody took it away!
My neighbour's asleep in his bed,
I'll soon make him wish he were dead,
I'll take up the tuba instead - WAA WAA !
Yes Konqueror is quite good! Site works fine for me, too (v3.5.4).
http://www.mutopiaproject.org/
Lots of public domain pdfs out there.
I tend to agree, although I only scanned the source. I don't dare run it on my server without setting up a proper sandbox first, and it's too late at night to attempt to figure out what "a proper sandbox" looks like for PHP.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Konquerer 3.5.5 on KDE 3.5.5
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
/usr/bin/violin
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Please don't click this link unless your genuinely interested in seeing it. I have a quota.
http://keleus.freeshell.org/dme-bug.png
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Salieri's probably spinning in his grave so fast that he's halfway to China by now.
Hmm... Some of the stuff looks like PDF, but is really just a huge assembly of images. The PHP isn't as relevant as the AJAX...
Anyway, one very easy way to force a download is to run Firefox without the Acrobat plugin. I use a 64-bit Firefox, but you can probably do this with a portable Firefox, or by temporarily renaming/removing the acrobat plugin dll (or so) from your Firefox plugin dir. Make sure your download settings don't automatically open Acrobat, then simply go to one of these pages. It'll prompt you with a choice to either open Acrobat or save the file.
You could also try clicking on the document and hitting shift+ctrl+s. On my Linux Acrobat Reader, at least when standing alone, this is the keyboard shortcut for File->Save a Copy. (I don't use the plugin much because I like my 64-bit Firefox, and acroread is 32-bit, but this might work from inside the browser.)
Another possibility is the Download Embedded extension -- or "addon", if you must. Works on just about anything embedded in a webpage. Not guaranteed to work on everything, of course -- a lot of Flash will load other Flash files from inside the SWF, and really, a Firefox extension can't do anything inside of a Firefox plugin. But it should work for PDFs. However, I haven't tried it on this page -- it may be that the page uses a frame, and I'm not sure Download Embedded handles frames (since they don't require an <embed> tag.)
And finally, you could just do a recursive wget, and essentially spider their entire site, including the PDFs. Then just do something like "find -iname '*.pdf'" if they're too buried for you to find on your own.
Let us know if you're bold enough to set up a torrent, if you decide to go the wget route!
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Perhaps they also ought to consider uploading to The Internet Archive which would help them offload the bandwidth burden. The Internet Archive carries a wide variety of works under a variety of licenses.
Digital Citizen
This is not how music should be treated 200 years after a composer's death, in particular in the day and age of the Internet.
I agree. And I'd like as much as the next person to see the complete Mozart truly free, "as in speech". But that does not negate the fact that this is a very significant event. I agree that it isn't free as in "free speech", only as in "free beer".
But before today, it was free in neither sense.
This is still a HUGE step in the right direction. As a violinist, for all practical purposes, I have the complete Mozart available to me. Even if I can't perform from these scores in public (I don't know if that's the case, just guessing), at least I can _get_ these scores. I can practice them. I can study them. I can even memorize them. And for the tiny percentage that I even want to perform in public, my orchestera will still have to pay up to rent the scores, as they've always done.
Well, geez, you already could copy the music under those principles before.
You'd first have to get your hands on them.
Sure, you can argue that my rights under copyright haven't changed, versus previously-available versions. I could, under "fair use", xerox a printed edition that I'd purchassed, and use it in the same way that I can now use a download from this site. True in theory, but I'd still have to pony up literally hundreds of dollars for a half-decent edition of a complete score for a major work such as a symphony. In practice, it was prohibitively expensive to get your hands on this stuff before today, and impossible in a lot of cases. Now, it's a mouse click away.
And before you remind me of Mutopia and others, just take a browse through them. Mutopia, for example, has about 60 hits for Mozart. Even if we assume each one is a complete score to a unique opus in original instrumentation, with all parts included -- a highly optimistic assumption! -- that's still less than 10% of Mozart's works.
This is a _big_ deal.
Think about how this impacts a musician's opportunities to learn music. Right now, if I hear a piece that I like, there's essentially no way to just take a look at the score, play with it for a few hours. Decide whether it's right for me and whether to go ahead and purchase the score. Before I can see a single measure, I have to make a major financial commitment. True, if the piece is the solo of a very popular concerto or work for solo instrument, there _might_ be an arangement in the local music store, that's authentic enough to get a taste of it. But, if it's, say, a violin part for a symphony, or some such, you are totally out of luck. Short of springing hundreds of dollars, you can't even get to look at it. But now, if it's a Mozart piece, you CAN take a look. This is great.
Postscript: I agree with the parent posting, by the way. It is a shame that public domain doesn't exist (for all practical purposes), even for 250 year-old compositions. I just want to point out that this announcement is still wonderful news for all Mozart-loving musicians.
You could've used CoralCDN if you wanted to make sure your quota didn't get hit. I've tried priming it for the image, but I've had no luck.
How sad that this is news.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
suxx0r!
Hold on, you mean he didn't lobby to have his copyright 'protected' for longer?
I could, under "fair use", xerox a printed edition that I'd purchassed, and use it in the same way that I can now use a download from this site.
Or you could just go to the library and copy it there.
In practice, it was prohibitively expensive to get your hands on this stuff before today, and impossible in a lot of cases. Now, it's a mouse click away.
Again, that's what libraries are for.
But before today, it was free in neither sense.
Actually, there's a significant amount of truly free sheet music around the internet, not just Mutopia.
The only scores definitely in the public domain are Mozart's original autographs. Engraved editions of his music, provided they were produced after 1923, are under copyright.
By the way, that "1923" is a local US thing. The equivalent date in the UK, for example, would be "1980" (1981 from next month...): it's 25 years from the end of the year of first publication, for the copyright in an original typography of a per-se out-of-copyright work. (And editions made by photoreproduction of a previously published typography don't qualify for a fresh copyright of this kind.) It's also worth noting that this period for 'publisher's' copyrights is set by s.15 of the 1988 copyright act in the UK and was left unchanged when the duration of the _author's_ copyrights was extended from 50 years to 70 years from the end of the year of the author's death (1995 regulations).
Aside from that, plenty of useful Mozart scores (e.g. many from Breitkopf and Haertel) were published in the 19th century, and are copyright-free even in the US, where Dover Publications for a long time provided a very useful service by republishing quite some numbers of them at reasonable prices.
Creating a definitive text from various scribbled manuscripts is painstaking work, it's no surprise that copyright law covers this process as well as that of purely original works.
The copyright in the NMA (Baerenreiter) scores appears to depend on two factors, (a) fresh typography and (b) the extent of significant editorial revisions. The first factor applies to all of the new-set scores, (and where the 25-year rule applies, some of these copyrights are already approaching or have even reached their end). The second factor may possibly not apply to all works, because to produce them it was certainly not usually a matter of "creating a definitive text from various scribbled manuscripts", some of the new editions differ from the old out-of-copyright ones by nothing more than a few corrected articulation-marks here or there -- like a few commas or periods of musical punctuation. But where the second factor does apply, it will presumably be an author's copyright timed by the lifetime + 70 years of the significant editor if any.
Like one of the earlier posters, I also don't 'get it' that a scan of an out-of-copyright score can attract a fresh copyright -- and yet, it was a private assertion of this kind (not tested in any court as far as I know) that effectively drove a set of scans of old and out-of-copyright Mozart scores off the internet within the past few years.
The complexity of copyright provisions, and their general unknown-ness, is clearly in itself a factor that takes away people's freedoms even to part of the extent that laws supposedly assure those freedoms. It is not often enough mentioned that, in this way, legal complications in themselves limit freedom.
-wb-
Too often, the site reverts to German (or some other non-English language :-> ).. and the interface doesn't seem to lend itself to mass-downloading.
Any ideas?
I am the maverick of Slashdot
Oh, nonsense. Mozart's works are out of copyright and are free. And they are available free in many places, both on-line and off-line. Furthermore, there are many low-cost editions based on out-of-copyright originals.
What these people have made available free-as-in-beer is the commentaries and editorial work on Mozart's music; it's just that they linked it up so inextricably with Mozart's own work that they end up putting restrictions on Mozart's work in the process.
These people should have announced "renowned Mozart commentaries now available for personal use on the Internet", not "Complete Mozart Works now Free"; the latter is trying to take credit for something they don't have a right to take credit for.
Can somebody please explain to me why they decided to use jpeg for these sheets? I think they can easily save some bandwidth _and_ jpeg artifacts if they use gif instead. Learn to choose your graphics format, plx.
Unfortunately, too often non-technical managers get to make technical decisions and supervise web development. They invariably go for eye candy, ignoring usability and performance issues. Publishing legacy formats on the web is not easy, but the result really doesn't got to be this bad.
Is there any program that will do the reverse -- translate midi files into scores?
Because Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died two whole CENTURIES ago! (cut and paste bots...grr)
Crap. What did the new CSS do with the "Post anonymously" option??
Let's call it free as in Mitnick.
I hope that shit with the violin next door doesn't know about this
Nothing witty
I'm sorry, but perhaps you have not heard midi music in a long time. Long are the days since soundboards came with lousy samples and no effects whatsoever: todays midis, with great samples and full wav synthesis with effects applied sound almost as great as any recording, specially works for piano, harpsichord and acoustic guitar alone. I agree String sections still sound rather synthetic though...
T -SAENS
If you're on Linux, use timidity++, which is the best MIDI synthesis software available. On Windows, be sure that you have in Control Panel -> Sounds and Multimedia -> Audio -> MIDI Reproduction set to Software Wavetable Synthethizer, otherwise it'll sound just as bad as you heard before.
Right now i'm listening to Saint Saen's Animal Carnivel and even though it includes orchestra as well as the piano, it sounds absolutely vibrant and lively! Give it another shot, i tell you. I believe i got this MIDI from here:
http://www.classicalarchives.com/main/s.html#SAIN
I believe the one i'm listening in particular is this one (the byte size matches):
http://www.classicalarchives.com/m/0/00crnval.mid
You have to get a free registration to download and that only gives you 5 downloads a day, which is kinda lame. But the MIDI's are of superb quality.
I also have another stunning source of quality MIDIs:
http://kunstderfuge.com/
Free registration and 10 downloads/day. This one is specially great for solo keyboard works.
I don't feel like it...
I can't play free-from-copyright-music on my Zune.
No jokes, please
SCORE!
Uh, gif? ...really?
png
"I'm sure Mozart is finally wealthy enough to where having his music in the public domain won't hurt him."
Funny thing is: he was a poor man. His wife wasn't even able to buy him a proper burial!
Something is very wrong with the world when people copying someone else's works and making money off it claim that other people can't do that with one of makind's most renowned artists...
I don't feel like it...
At least in most sane countries and localities.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Letters between Mozart and his parents, girlfriends and sister are full of escatological references.
One quite amusing find Mozart and his other talking about farts....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
http://www.imslp.org/ is a site that contains actual public domain editions of many of these same scores. It has more mozart than mutopia but less than this site. Check it out!
Or you could just go to the library and copy it there.
You must have access to much better libraries than I do. Can you name a single library anywhere other than in one of the world's major capitals, that carries the complete works of Mozart? Or even 20% of that?
Actually, there's a significant amount of truly free sheet music around the internet, not just Mutopia.
A significant amount, yes.
A significant fraction of the entire works of Mozart (or any other major composer)? No way.
Although most classical music is obviously too old to be under copyright, the rights to specific editions of pieces are owned by the publishers.
This is true, but in the UK at least the typographical rights (rights to the specific layout) on any work expire relatively quickly, compared to rights on the work itself. In the UK this is 25 years after publication.
So why did they buy the rights to anything? If they simply bought a set printed in the UK not after 1980, they would have been able to copy the music itself for free. They may not have been able to copy the whole cover design, and any editorial notes would have been off-limits too, but the main thing's the music, and that is completely free.
HAL.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
"published copies of them are still under copyright by whomever published them" fuck them! Mozart's music is a universal cultural hallmark of mankind.
Arranging and formatting music is extremely difficult and complex. How many people would I have killed for sheet music with better typesetting?
Granted, not quite as difficult or awe-inspiring as composing a masterpiece. But, typesetters and arrangers do the world a great service by making the music playable - and if you want to photocopy the version they spent hours arranging, fuck you. Go get your own - Mozart's original manuscripts are free.
You're not taking advantage of a long-dead composer, but the people who spend time arranging and publishing the music. They're still alive, and deserve compensation if you use their work - but you don't have to. So relax.
DATABASE WOW WOW
It's primed now. Thanks!
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
+5 funny, but this is
p.s., I was working up eine kleine joke too, but you've nailed it.
NP :-)
(Also, sorry if I came off as being a besserwisser (i.e. "You could've used..."). Of course everybody does not know the same things as I do)
By the way, if you want to help with such an effort, you should download a piece, convert to lilypond, and then upload to Mutopiaproject.org
Free unix account: freeshell.org
You probably can't even perform it. So, distribution through BT is not going to happen.
An understandable misunderstanding of musical copyright. To make a long story short, what the IMF have acquired the rights to is not Mozart's music, which has been in the public domain for a very long time now. Without controlling the copyrights of the musical works themselves, one can't control performances. (Or the creation of new recordings, print publications, or video synchronizations of them, while we're at it.)
IMF only holds the rights to specific editions of the notation. That's a print copyright, not a musical copyright, but it does give them the right to control the duplication/distribution of the scores themselves. Which could explain the iffiness of BitTorrent: I haven't looked at their download license, but they are definitely within their rights to deny downloaders the right to redistribute by any means.
Here's something I find interesting, and maybe somebody slightly more knowledgeable about score publication legalities can help me out. Hasn't it been legal all along for someone to create a new collection of Mozart scores and make it available under some sort of public license? I guess they'd have to be able to demonstrate that they didn't base it on any existing edition, which would probably be pretty hard (I'm sure SCO would sue them), not to mention its usefulness would depend upon whether musicians trusted its quality.
Having the complete works of Mozart is really not a big deal. Most public libraries would not have it, but almost any university or college with a music school will. I guess if the university library has a policy of not letting in people except students/staff, that's pretty tough and certainly unreasonable (they're not that bastardly where I am, and a lot of university libraries will give cards to people who live in the same town).
holy crap, apparently you need to have four hands to play some of these pieces! No wonder so few people can play mozart well.
ôó
There's no "moving" to digg if you have anything that nearly resembles what normal people call "a brain". I used to check it out, then removed it from my RSS feeds page. There's simply far too many stupid users and stupid articles. Routinely there are "technical breakdowns" of different products. The most recent on I read was a comparison between component and composite video cables for gaming. Not from a reputable website like anandtech, but some doofus blogger's page. Long story short, he said "component is obviously better because it breaks the video signal down into red, green, and blue signals." Not one mention of luminance and chrominance. Not a big deal at the end of the day, but I'm simply interested in technical accuracy. Repeat that sort of thing 2-3x per day, and you'll see why I say there's no moving to digg if you have a brain.
'Hasn't it been legal all along for someone to create a new collection of Mozart scores and make it available under some sort of public license?'
.org type website so that you don't receive 100 copies of 'The Magic Flute' and none of his other works. [If you get my drift].
Yes, this is possible. They could base it on OLD published manuscripts which are in public domain. I'm sure if they could find enough OLD pieces they could do it. As I'm not familiar with what pieces / manuscripts etc are in or out of public domain, I'm not sure how much searching this might take, but if someone could look at some of Mozarts original manuscripts (if they still exist) or ones from around his time, I'm pretty sure most if not all would be in public domain somewhere.
I'm pretty sure it's still only the US which has copyright which goes on almost Ad Infinitum (almost) you should find all of the pieces in public domain in the rest of the world somewhere.
The other way to do it, is because the music itself is in public domain, it might be possible to just LISTEN to someone playing you the piece [not a recording, unless it is a public domain recording] and then transcribe it by ear. Get enough volunteers doing their own transcriptions and you should be able to get the complete works together. Someone might have to co-ordinate the project from a
NOTE, this transcription thing would only work for non-copyrighted pieces [such as Mozart], you couldn't do it for someone like 'The Red Hot Chilly Peppers' whose songs should still be under their own control. You'd have to get permission to transcribe any copyrighted material.
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)