IMSLP.org Closed

What would that accomplish?

we'd show our support.... hence the petition of support.

Wouldn't really accomplish much else, maybe inspire the owner of the website to work faster. Speaking of which, many props to him already; for the fact that he's in college, he's done a whole heck of a lot to make IMSLP one of the best music score websites that I've ever seen.

I join the UE boycott :angry:

There's no need to boycott anyone. All my reservations about copyright law aside, IMSLP is the party that overreacted here.

How so?

Well they actually did. (to my opinion of course, which is nothing but my personal opinion, and I'm nobody. Just in case anyone jumps and starts shouting or anything!)

You see, UE issued a rather reasonable letter, which was not a cease a desist, as it was first mentioned, but only to stop giving copyrighted material to any countries where it was actually copyrighted. Copyright laws are different from country to country, and thus while in Canada, some scores aged 50+ years, are in public domain, in Europe that is 70+ years. This means that some works of Bartok, Malher, etc, are copyrighted in Europe, or some countries anyways, but not Canada, or USA, or anything simmilar.

The letter was very "law abide" written by some half arsed lawyer, and the people in UE took it personally.

In addition, this whole thing was used as a meer excuse to shut down IMSLP, since they had financial and time issues.

Now, this whole situation has gained a lot of publicity, and various half irrelavent parties jump in, to gain something rather personal or even worst, without much care for IMSLP. For example, and I have no problem mentioning it, there is the Swedish private party, or at least someone who claims that he is with them, named Odin, who discuss things about the copyright law, about wars, battles, how to change things, and how he actually blackmailed UE through private correspondance that they should respond to him what he wanted to hear (or something close to that. It would appear that UE is not being straight really) or he would go public with the private correspondance, which is nothing short of shity attitude! When I did mention that to him, and that, although his intentions might be good, he is probably doing more harm than good, his reply was that "this is war".

The whole attitude from IMSLP is "we need to win this thing". There doesn't seem to be much attempt to reopen the IMSLP, although it would be dead easy (there is a list already from UE for works which are "problematic"), and they simply ask for everything. They act like broken hearted girlfriends who want their boyfriend to suffer or something. Many in there are like "they started it", which is something that I use with my kids (4 and 2 years old).

In all the UE issue is quite simple.

There are scores which are copyrighted someplace and not otherplace. Find a simple IP detection software that gets where the user is coming from. Europe? no go. Canda, go. End of story. Tag the files, after all they are already tagged, and if needed I'm sure people would volunteer for the job, the raise in traffic has been enormous.

Money? Start asking for donations. Wiki is asking itself why not IMSLP? End of story.

I don't see why if a Bartok work is problematic, that the Beethoven or Chopin works have to be down as well.

In all this is a disgraceful behaviour from the part of everyone affiliated in IMSLP, but not those who actually work in IMSLP (such as the admins, or mods, or Mr. Feldmalher). The UE should be boycoted" and etc, are rather rubbish, although it was my initial thought as well.

That's my personal take to things.