[Foundation-l] Implications of IMSLP case

Mon Oct 22 03:45:13 UTC 2007

On 10/21/07, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> The letter says, "As you are aware, [Europe has copyright author death
> +70, Canada has author death + 50]. Certain of these composers' works
> are further protected in Canada or the United States under the
> appropriate /Copyright Act/ of these jurisdictions."
>
> Further protected, what are they talking about? Any ideas?

There are special cases like Peter Pan in the UK some jurisdictions,
so that could be part of it.. Also things like the WWII copyright
extensions (i.e. Antoine de Saint-Exupery).

For sheet music, however, there are a lot of other minefields:

A *lot* of the scores out there are not verbatim duplicates of the
authors' original works. Frequently you find transcriptions for
different instruments, for example arranging a work written for
orchestra for piano, or a brass ensemble or vice versa. These
alterations are indisputably copyrightable just about anywhere.  Also,
the scores may enumerate various types of ornamentation or
embellishment which the original author left to the the performers
taste, in the world of sheet music these changes are also understood
to be copyrightable.  Finally, especially for some forms of music
there are sometimes substantial parts the composer intentionally left
out (i.e. cadenza in concerti) which are often written in sheet music,
which are also certainly copyrightable.

In many cases the composer's original works (called urtext editions)
can be very very hard to locate... and sometimes the urtext will still
end up containing copyrightable cadenza(s).  As a result there is
probably a fair amount of truly old music which has fallen out of the
public domain. :(

In addition to that mess the layout/typography of sheet much enjoys
copyright in some jurisdictions... although these can be avoided by
retranscribing the works... but for many kinds of music that can be a
really substantial amount of work. (Too bad we don't have the WikiTeX
sheet music extension...)

Most online sheet music sites have truly terrible copyright policies.
Of all of them that I am aware of only Mutopia
(http://www.mutopiaproject.org/) makes the kind of effort to validate
the copyright status that we would be proud of.