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Provider of Free Public Domain Music Shuts Down
Mark Rogers writes "The International Music Score Library Project has provided access to copies of many musical scores that are in the public domain. It has just been shut down due to a cease-and-desist letter sent to the site operator by a European Union music publisher (Universal Edition). A majority of the scores recently available at IMSLP were in the public domain worldwide. Other scores were not in the public domain in the United States or the EU (where copyright extends for 70 years after the composer's death), but were legal in Canada (where the site is hosted) and many other countries. The site's maintainers clearly labeled the copyright status of such scores and warned users to follow their respective country's copyright law. Apparently this wasn't enough for Universal Edition, who found it necessary to protect the interests of their (long-dead) composers and shut down a site that has proved useful to many students, professors, and other musicians worldwide."
I don't understand why the site is being taken down. The publisher's demands would be satisfied by removing the scores still under copyright in the EU. As I understand it, the copyright status of these scores is noted, so presumably it wouldn't be a difficult job to identify and remove those just those scores. And since, according to the article, most of the scores on the site are out of copyright everywhere, removing those still under copyright in the EU, while regrettable, would not destroy the utility of the site. The cease-and-desist letter is annoying, but I don't see that it should require taking down the site.
Based on the summary, I thought his ISP had shut him down. Rather, it seems he just caved. Since Canada is not part of the EU, what weight could such a C&D have?
Allow me to quote someone named Carolus on the IMSLP site's forums:
This was just one person providing a public service... uh, sorry, competing unfairly with the copyright cartel.
I saw a political sticker with a skull and crossbones, with the line "Voting is not the only answer" under it. While that's a little extreme...
True. There must be a better way of changing the law than poisoning politicians.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I never went to the site but depending on how it worked, the labels could have had a strong argument to take the owner to court in the U.S. They'd probably use the importing the works into the U.S., "targeting" consumers that in the U.S., etc. I'm sure Canada and the U.S. have agreements to enforce judgments over the borders. I'm not really sure how you think that would work. If you allowed that, you'd open the door to any country enforcing its copyright laws on every other country, simply because the content was potentially accessible to someone in their nation. That's a hell of a can of worms to open, because copyright laws vary wildly between countries -- in the E.U., for instance, you can copyright databases in ways that are not deemed valid in the U.S.
You might be able to find a lower court judge stupid enough to rule that was initially (there are a lot of judges, and by definition, that means there are at least some really bad ones), but I can't imagine that it wouldn't be overturned on appeal.
I think the really sad thing here is that the operators of the site don't have either the will or the resources to fight this to its conclusion. So therefore, as usual, the case is not being decided on anything approaching the merits, but simply by the might of deep pockets.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Seriously.
I never heard of the site or the operator before this story, but a quick read of his forum makes it pretty clear the guy was already worn out from the workload of maintaining the site. He would have walked away sooner or later. The cease and desist letter merely hastened the inevitable.
Fan sites and other labors of love nearly always evolve into large and larger doses of labor with decreasing amounts of joy and love. The sites days were numbered long ago.
-DaveU
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
I'd add software to the list of things that shouldn't be patented. Even if we fix the obviousness problem, the patents still wouldn't be achieving their goal. The language of patents is purposefully made even more inscrutable than machine code, so as to be as general as possible while divulging as little as possible. The result is that software patents don't contain the equivalent of "schematics" for physical processes or designs. It's far easier to guess or infer the block diagrams than to coax them from the language of the patent, so never actually look to patents to implement anything.
Clearly the real "schematics" of software are source code. If English could capture software's function as well, we'd all be out of a job. So to adequately do their job, software patents would need to include full source code and accompanying documentation. But since source code is indisputably covered under copyright law, the patent system would thus become more of a source code escrow system, mandatory for copyright protection. The real question is whether the trade secret nature of proprietary source code is a big enough problem to warrant the incredible added overhead of such a system. I don't think it is.
In short, copyright serves the industry well enough, with minimal overhead. Patents cause more problems than they fix, and their overhead excludes basement coders, the modern equivalent of garage inventors. The best way to fix the patent system is to push it back into physical realms where it can do some good. The tech industry can do just fine without them, thanks.
I'm a bit fuzzy about the difference you're trying to make between composers and artists. For me a composer is a bona fide artist. Must be a weakness in my English language skills. Well, I'm a composer, and I recognise that I probably won't be making much money off my music during my lifetime. My kids though, may well have the distinction of saying "yeah, that unfunk fellow was my dad" and thus, I'm all for them getting money from my work.
As to the distinction I'm trying to make, well, it's pretty simple.
I write music. A String Quartet or an Orchestra will (hopefully) perform it. It may even get recorded. When it's released, it will be titled something along the lines of "unfunk's second symphony. Performed by the Suchandsuch Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Whatshisname"
Britney Spears, on the other hand, performs music (and I use the term loosely) written by somebody else. It's always Britney's song though, and not the-person-who-wrote-it's. That person got paid their songwriting fee, and that's that (I think).
The point I'm trying to make is that the Classical Music world is like the reverse of the pop music world, and that Pop Artists aren't really 'artists'...
Having said all that though, I'd be pretty pissed off with a corporation making decisions on my dead behalf.. especially as I've been giving my scores away to anybody that will play them for as long as I've been writing music.
> That person got paid their songwriting fee, and that's that (I think).
No, that person gets paid quite a bit for performance rights and music-publishing.
'Probably much more per track than Ms. Spears gets for doing the vocals since in addition to royalties on the album and online music sales the composer also gets paid for radio-play where Ms. Spears does not.
What makes Ms. Spears' arrangement more advantageous than the composers' are the payments from other sources such as advances against sales, concerts, merchandise, appearances and publicity, commercial advertisements -- and of course the free stuff that she gets just for showing up at awards ceremonies, bars and parties.
Too bad that, unless you're in the top
I write and perform music too. I normally do so for free because of the joy it gives me, but I often get offered free beer and sometimes money to perform.
I'm also part of a team who are building a railway and port (for iron ore). The port will be providing a service to the West Australian community and generating income for decades at least, and probably hundreds of years. It'd be nice if someone offered me part of the profits of the facilty for the next 70 years.
I don't expect it though, any more than I expect people to give me money for my music.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."