Boo Universal Edition

[Nightscape]

Universal Edition of Austria has struck a terrible blow to music by effectively forcing the closure of IMSLP.org, what was once perhaps the most wonderful resource for classical musicians and enthusiasts on the internet.  IMSLP hosted out of copyright editions of music - that is, music in the public domain which should always be free to be distributed in my opinion - and was a website that was officially recommended by MIT and was also used as a valuable resource by Oberlin, Manhattan School of Music, Stanford, Brown and others.

Over the past year or two it has been a valuable resource for me as a student, due to its vast resources.  It was nearing completion of the complete Bach-Ausgrabe.

I read the cease and desist letter from Universal Edition and it makes some ridiculous claims that IMSLP and its users were plotting to commit copyright infringement against them.  Only public domain works were to be allowed on IMSLP and that is all I ever saw there.  I will never order music from Universal Edition ever again - if I need Ligeti or something I'll just get it through interlibrary loan or by some other means... but I will not be giving them a cent ever again.

[thalbergmad]

I agree.

Boycott the bastards.

Thal

[ronde_des_sylphes]

Is it not absurd when:

A company can sell "Hatto" recordings, ripped off from other arists:
No complaint regarding breach of copyright seems pending.

https://www.pianorarescores.com/ : Again, breach of copyright for profit.

IMSLP: Not for profit. Lawyers descend on it.

I suspect the composers published by Universal would be disgusted.

[richard black]

No, there really was at least _some_ in-copyright music on IMSLP, though all of it was out of copyright somewhere. But I don't see why that justifies trying to close the whole site. I mean, facsimiles of mid-19th-century scores? Not much copyright on that!

The Hatto hoax would certainly have brought on an attack of the lawyers but for the fact that Barrington-Coupe pulled the whole lot the instant he was rumbled. No record company wants to spend money on lawyers when the main requirement (stop selling the discs) has already been met.

[ronde_des_sylphes]

It would be interesting to know what would have ensued had the owner of the site simply decided to remove the material which was in copyright in Europe but not in Canada. My suspicion is that the legal threats were every bit as much about protecting sales of their out-of-copyright material as they were about the copyrighted material.

https://imslpforums.org/Second%20U-E%20Cease%20and%20Desist%20Letter.pdf

I note that the letter mentions Mahler, Berg, Respighi and others who died more than 70 years ago.

[ahinton]

On the few occasions when I visited the IMSLP site, I noted that there were indeed some works in it which are in copyright in some territories, although, to be fair to IMSLP, they went to some trouble to try to explain which works might be in copyright and which in public domain in which territories; this is far from easy to do (as they must have realised), given the lack of consisency between copyright laws in different countries and the addition factor that such laws are in any case subject to alteration at any time in each individual country.

I do agree that it would be a shame for this and/or other similar sites to be forced to close when they provide a service in the provision of public domain music. However, all my comments here have so far been concerned with the composers' copyrights. Publisher rights are quite another matter and I can also understand how a publisher that invests money in producing editions for sale to the public gets annoyed by online and other facitilies that make available copies of the work in which they have invested. Universal's attitude may seem hard-nosed but it is surely not entirely without reason. Universal are a large organisation, so to compare their stance with that of individual composers would hardly be equitable (see the remarks re the "piano rare scores" site, whose effort to draw attention to the possible copyright status of their wares was nowhere near as clear as IMSLP's was); a large publisher can afford the costs of legal representation far better than can most individual composers.

Best,

Alistair