Fingerings

[BKhon]

I notice so many people upload works on IMSLP which have their own creative fingerings on them. Fingerings not taken from other public domain sources have been deemed original enough for protection in US courts, which should mean the work is under a creative commons license. How should be deal with such a thing? It's not practical to go through ever single file...

[KGill]

For reference, I'll copy Carolus's previous answer to this when it came up on his talk page:

I wouldn't worry about it unless someone complains. Most folks who write in fingerings aren't going to think about it in the first place. Secondly, there are no doubt lots of fingerings which are copied from earlier sources - even if by memory only. There's also the question of just how individual could fingerings really be for a given passage - which opens up the question of originality. The court decision was a) from a lower court; and b) a long time ago (1940s, I think). Carolus 01:16, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

[sweetie_candykim]

I notice so many people upload works on IMSLP which have their own creative fingerings on them. Fingerings not taken from other public domain sources have been deemed original enough for protection in US courts, which should mean the work is under a creative commons license. How should be deal with such a thing? It's not practical to go through ever single file...

I am sure the person that wrote the fingerings on is not going to sue. They released them into the public domain in the public domain in the first place. And if they didn't write them themselves, the original person is not going to complain either or they wouldn't have made them available to the uploader for free anyway.

You can release something into the public domain in the first instance without it ever having a licence to use it.