Free sheet music from IMSLP is back!
Monday, July 14th, 2008Woo-hoo! The International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) announced its reopening, June 29, 2008! They’ve still got about 20% of their scores blocked for download, pending copyright review, but they’re open.
IMSLP was the place to go for public domain classical music scores on the Internet, before Universal Editions sent them a nastygram and they had to shut down. But the open source/creative commons community rallied. They provided moral, legal, volunteer, and financial support, and here we are - good job, folks!
A recap of the dispute: Although IMSLP’s copyright review team enforces the Canadian copyright term of 50 years post-mortem, Universal Editions threatened to hold Feldmahler, the owner, personally liable for international downloads from any parts of the world where copyright terms are 70 years post-mortem (The U.S., due to the Mickey Mouse Protection Act and the EU). Presumably, he would also be held liable for the costs of ascertaining the damages (”We need your server indefinitely.”), and their legal fees as well. (”Quit now or we will ruin you, kid.”) Thus the shutdown, even when the overwhelming majority of the scores were public domain.