Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue

[Carolus]

Hi,

I just noticed that a full score was posted. Grofe, whose orchestration was uploaded, died in 1972. As I understand it, this means the score in question is likely not PD in Canada until Jan. 1, 2023. Unless Canadian law treats "derivative works" as mere adjuncts of the principal work, in which case Grofe's orchestration has no independent copyright status from that of the original version.

The other factor potentially arguing against the validity of the 1942 copyright would be if a set of parts and/or condensed score were issued earlier. All full score is merely a compilation of the parts and would enjoy no copyrightability separate from the parts. In practice, full scores were typically issued long before parts, but not always. That doctrine comes from US law anyway, so a separate publication of parts and/or condensed score might have zero bearing under the Canadian statute.

Sorry to act like "the enforcer" around here, but we are being watched very closely. It's important to be up front and transparent about this issue.
BTW, Gershwin and Ravel's works (along with those of other composers who died in 1937) do not become public domain in the EU until Jan. 1, 2008.

[horndude77]

I noticed this also. I agree that it should be removed (better safe than sorry). Here's the wikipedia article on Grofe for those interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferde_Grof%C3%A9 Thank you for being the enforcer. We all need to do this and be as honest as possible if we want IMSLP to survive. It is becoming a great resource!

[matthew]

hi, sorry about uploading a non-pd file, i should've checked more thouroughly.
But would it be in the public domain in the US? It was publised between 1923 and 1963, and i've searched the records and have found no trace of the copyright being renewed on either this orchestration or the original work, i may've missed it or mis-understood the laws, but it'd be a shame not to have it if it's PD.

[horndude77]

Don't worry about it. It was fixed quickly. Now I think you're right about the copyright being iffy. I think we would want some kind of proof on its work page that the copyright wasn't renewed if we want to keep it up with confidence. I'm not quite sure how we could do that unfortunately. Any ideas?

[matthew]

I doubt that there is any easy way, i've checked all the US copyright office records (from 1978) and checked the 1950-1977 records on project gutenberg, i don't know if this covers it all, does anyone know if copyright could be renewed before 1950? And if the project gutenberg index is complete for the 28 years it covers.

[Carolus]

The Gutenberg archive of Copyright registrations and renewals does not include the volumes for music for some reason. Also (as you noted), the copyright office's online seach only applies to those renewals done after 1978. The only way to search the pre-1978 records is to a) go to Washington, DC and check the records at the copyright office in person; or b) pay the copyright office to conduct a formal search of their records.

One of the best ways to tell if a post-1922 work of a US composer like Gershwin was renewed or not is to check the catalog of E. F. Kalmus. They specialize in reprinting PD music and are very fast to pick up anything that fell through the cracks by failure to renew, failure to publish with proper notice, etc. The "Rhapsody in Blue" is not in the 2006-2007 Kalmus catalog. You can be about 99% sure that the work was published with the correct notice, registered, and renewed.

[Peter]

carolus, we need a law enforcer around here, and you seem to know the copyright laws best, so we thank you. you are completely right that IMSLP sould be as clear as possible on non-public domain works. I think we're doing very good. Most non-PD-submissions are very quickly noticed. In my opinion, the uploader should get a warning on his talk page to make very clear that illegal files are not wanted.
The only problem is that it's not always that clear what's in public domain and what's not.