by Carolus » Sat Oct 20, 2007 7:48 pm
I'll try to address some issues raised by Funper and others here.
While your points about the public domain status of these works in Canada are quite true, there are several others factors to take account of, among which are:
1. Canada's judicial system is generally very sympathetic to rulings issued by EU magistrates. Ironically, the USA is considerably more resistant (at least in places) to such meddling by judicial ideologues and corporatist cronies who like to impose their rules on people halfway around the world. Other countries with life-plus-50 terms, like South Korea, are not at all likely to abide by EU pontifications. IMSLP has a strong case, but it was by no means guaranteed that Canadian courts would be sympathetic.
2. The UE threat was probably just the leading edge for a series of legal threats from a consortium of large European publishers. IMSLP has been under discussion as a major threat in the newsletter of a EU publishers' asscoiation - which has been reported in the American Music Publishers Assocation newsletter. (Curiously, most US publishers are either unaware of IMSLP or don't care.)
3. IMSLP has grown so huge that its administration and management are really beyond the capabilities of a single person plus several trusty and reliable helpers. The time has really come for IMSLP to be re-constituted in a more institutional form, like Gutenberg or Wikipedia, or perhaps taken over by a consortium of music libraries.
4. Life-plus-70 is no guarantee. As you can see from the list, there are no less than four composers listed in the C & D letter who have been dead for over 70 years. This could have been sheer stupidity and arrogance on UE's part, or these composers could still be protected in Austria by some sort of special provision in that country's copyright law.
The majority of income for most music publishers (apart from those firms who specialize in public domain reprints) is derived from copyrighted works. I suspect that UE's major income streams are from performance and broadcast royalties generated by composers like Bartok, Richard Strauss, Arvo Pärt, etc. The sale of printed scores is fairly minimal, but still significant. The entire distribution network for selling printed music scores is very cumbersome and expensive - even more so than that for books. For example, if someone here wanted to take a decent-quality PDF from IMSLP, print copies of a score and offer it for sale on Amazon.com, they'd be in for a very rude awakening if they thought they could price the item for slightly more than the print cost. Amazon demands a 55% discount, with no shipping charges, from publishers who list their titles with them. That means if you price your score at $10.00, Amazon buys it for $4.50 and you pay the shipping to send it to their warehouse, not to mention all of the other expenses associated with simply staying in business. Amazon is not exactly fast about paying their bills, either. This is for one of the simplest and most direct distribution networks in existence. Large music retailers like Sheet Music Plus all demand the same high discounts and generous terms. This does not excuse UE's disgraceful behavior, mind you, but they may be acting partially out of desperation.
) and I don't like very much heroes... I am only trying to understand what to do, like others (and most of all I would like to understand if IMSLP has violed copyright law of Canada...).