International Music Score Library Project

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studio32

International Music Score Library Project

Post by studio32 »

They want to be a great open internet library for music sheets...


Update: It has been confirmed that IMSLP will be online again on July 1st, 2008 at 12AM EST. In the meanwhile, much work remains to be done, and I will be setting up branch projects before then. I will update this page with any news.

Introduction on what happened

The International Music Score Library Project was a repository of more than 15,000 musical scores that are in the public domain here in Canada. I was forced to close the site due to circumstance after receiving lawsuit threats from music publishers that do not want the public domain to exist.
The immediate threat was from Universal Edition, a publisher in Austria. Whereas copyright in Canada lasts until 50 years after the author's death, copyright in Austria lasts 20 years longer. Universal Edition threatened to sue me, perhaps in Canada or perhaps in Austria, for violating Austrian law. There is no reason why Austrian law should apply to this site in Canada, but as a student I did not have the resources to resist even an absurd threat from a company with money to pay lawyers to attack music.
I greatly thank Richard M. Stallman for his support in this matter, and for his offer and help in writing this summary introduction (something that I had neglected).

Current IMSLP status

There have been requests for an explanation of what is going on, so I'm going to lay out the projected timeline.
Essentially, I will be meeting in person with 5 people/organizations to discuss the support and continuation of IMSLP. These will likely last into May or even June, so do not expect the site to be online until late June/July at the earliest.

Due to requests we (IMSLP admins in charge of the resurrection) have decided to regularly post updates, even if they are not conclusive. We hope this will put any thoughts of IMSLP being dead to rest in the mind of IMSLP supporters. We will here post the earliest upcoming event, and update them as new situations arise and new events are planned.
Early April - I will be setting up the blog and the branch projects.

UPDATE: Due to progress with getting the main wiki up I will have to postpone this to late April or even early May (when I have some more time). But that is supposed to be good news :)
http://imslp.org/
http://imslp.wikidot.com/start

More 'open' sheets
http://www.sheetmusicfox.com/

It in the name... with mainly (german) organ music...
http://www.copy-us.com/

The last one for now...
http://www.rowy.net/sheet_music.html also in the dutch language!!!
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