[ANPPOM-L] IMSLP shutdown

[carlos palombini]

As some of you are probably aware, the International Music Score
Library Project (IMSLP) is a website that distributes out-of-copyright
scans of music on a wiki-interface (i.e., anyone can contribute) free
of charge.  Available on the site were the most important works by
18th and 19th century composers, including most of the Bach
Gesellschaft edition, and contributed transcriptions of many important
Medieval and Renaissance works.  From the efforts of one Canadian
college student, the site had grown into one of the most important
classical music sites on the Internet, with servers in three countries
and a team of volunteers.

 (http://www.imslp.org/)

The site has been taken down this week after a cease-and-desist letter
from Universal Edition.  The IMSLP held scores from several UE
composers, some of which are in copyright in some parts of the world
and out of copyright in others.  The project took great pains to
ensure that files were always stored on servers in countries where the
score was out of copyright and to inform users about the copyright
status of each work.  IMSLP disputes the merits of UE's case but
cannot afford fighting a protracted legal case against a major music
publisher, and has thus given in to the demands.

 (search for IMSLP at news.google.com)

IMSLP is now looking for a larger foundation or organization with a
history of supporting, and the resources to support, the rights of
limited copyright terms.  Such organizations could include the
Wikimedia Foundation (the publisher of Wikipedia) or the Electronic
Frontier Foundation. I want to urge members of scholarly community
 to write in support of IMSLP's goals to
imslp em imslp.org .  Doing so is not necessarily an endorsement of
IMSLP's side against UE (most of us are not copyright lawyers); rather
it would be taken as a sign that the scholarly music community
believes that the free distribution of out-of-copyright music is
necessary to the vitality of the field.  It would also help IMSLP's
search for larger foundational help.

-- 
carlos palombini (dr p)
professor adjunto de musicologia
universidade federal de minas gerais
<cpalombini em gmail.com>

"The idiocy of rural life..." (Karl Marx, 1848)