http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/271389
Almost one year ago to this day, thousands of musicians were upset to find that one of their favorite web resources had vanished. The International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP), home to tens of thousands of pages of sheet music, was taken down by creator Edward W. Guo when Universal Edition, an Austrian music publisher, got involved. Universal Edition ordered the IMSLP to block European users from using the site. Guo, better known by his username Feldmahler, planned to bring the website back up once he was able to calm his Austrian predator, which proved to be pretty tricky. In case you don't know what is meant by the word "score," it's just another word for sheet music. For the piano, it would look like this.
IMSLP servers are physically hosted in Canada; therefore, the website is under Canadian law. All scores submitted to IMSLP either belong to the public domain, or permission has been granted by the holder of the copyrights. In Canada, the requirements for a copyrighted work to enter the public domain is 50 years after its issue, as opposed to our 70 in the United States.
After taking the site down, Feldmahler wisely sought legal counsel. He believed what he was doing was legal, but he feared Universal Edition. For all he knew, they might have been days away from suing him for each piece of music that did not comply with Europe's definition of "public domain." While I do not know European law, from what I understand, the sheet music to many songs that are fair game for us North Americans to share are not fair game in Europe. The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) helped Guo ensure that his project was legal. Also, Lawrence Lessig and professor Michael Geist referred the case to several others, helping shed light on the injustice.
On June 28th, 2008, Feldmahler resurrected the website with its same library of over 16,000 documents. He also opened with a letter that reminded "publishers" (i.e., those submitting music scores) that the IMSLP was not created to oppose the music publishing industry, but rather to complement it. A classical music fan, I found this website a few days ago. It's a wiki-page. You will notice how similar it looks to an ordinary article from wikipedia.org. These days, anyone can start a webpage like this. Hundreds are created every week, but the majority of them fail to attract a significant number of visitors.
The IMSLP is once again building steam. The library currently houses over 21,000 pieces of music. I had assumed that these were mostly classical pieces, but surprisingly, pretty much all music styles can be found on the site. Scores are carefully categorized chronologically, by composer, and in some cases, by instrument. It's a cool site and, like all wikis, all users can add to it. However, Feldmahler regulates the site very well and insists that every single piece of music is legal.
It's a rare case that those at the frontline of Internet creation go about it in a completely legal way; the folks with the IMSLP, which includes a host of avid musicians in addition to Feldmahler, are doing just that. I hope that others will follow Edward Guo's example by using the World Wide Web in creative, helpful ways from which any of us can benefit.
- Jordan Morsberger
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