The gist of this call is a question to the lack of a list of specific UE works in their Cease-and-Desist (see paragraph three).
Though not an attorney myself, I consort with them on business issues regularly. From that perspective, the C&D letter from UE seems to reduce to two (seeming not-unreasonable abstract) requests: "1) take down material for which we clearly hold copyright by any country's standard; 2) institute IP filtering to prevent downloading to countries where copyright laws preclude."
HOWEVER, what puzzles me and I don't agree with: is why UE did not facilitate compliance to (1), moving from the abstract to specifics, by enumerating the specific scores of theirs whose copyrights are unambiguously violated by IMSLP given its construal of copyright law??
In other words (and this is my call to the more legally-minded), if you UE were to bring suit against IMSLP, wouldn't the court require you to list the specific works with which you take exception rather than a) claiming some abstract violation of copyright and/or, even more ridiculously (b) asking IMSLP to act as your legal-aide by sifting thru their archive themselves to tag the offending and suspect works on your behalf?
It doesn't seem productive to tackle IP-filtering (2) until the issue regarding (1) is clarified.
UE, the reason people suspect ill-will from you is the C&D was thus non-specific. Good faith would have been indicated should a list of specific works have been contained in the letter. Instead, you asked IMSLP to do your (legal) homework for you, and then go so far as to continue with lazy abstractions in your histrionically-titled "do we live in a world without copyright law?" thread on this board.
Get specific, do due diligence (as you would need to as if you meant to serve suit), and this whole matter can be resolved quickly, productively, and amicably.
Thanks for reading, -- Mike Z.
Question re non-specifics to UE, legal-types & the commu
Moderator: kcleung
Actually, I do have a good degree of sympathy for UE's position in all this, just not for the approach taken.
It isn't enough for them to go through the site looking for the scores that they own rights to, and neither should they have to spend time effort and money in so doing. The problem is that while there may be only a few works at the moment, likely many more would follow, and it is the future more serious infringements that concern them as well.
Now I have an enormous sympathy for this, and can't disagree with the Country by country IP filtering approach as being the most logical and sensible method of ensuring their rights are observed. I still believe that an opportunity has been missed to generate income, but that's another story.
On the other hand I do wonder how solid the ground is where things are PD in the host country regards their insistence of removal. Perhaps the extent of their rights are to insist upon blocking access from remaining copyrighted territories and respecting the public domain rights of the expired territories?
While this might well be a fairly standard type approach and letter, a friend who is involved in copyright law has indicated that they may very well not have the right to enforce removal, but likely can seek damages for providing means of property theft. Call it a type of aiding in such a theft.
The simplest solution is IP block which then means that IMSLP would no longer have such a liability, and yet would still be able to produce such works within a legal framework on a country by country basis. My friend suggests that is the maximum that UE can insist upon where works are copyrighted in some territories and PD in others. Care would need to be taken with regards to individual edition's copyright status as well as those of any co-authors.
That's what I'm advised.
It isn't enough for them to go through the site looking for the scores that they own rights to, and neither should they have to spend time effort and money in so doing. The problem is that while there may be only a few works at the moment, likely many more would follow, and it is the future more serious infringements that concern them as well.
Now I have an enormous sympathy for this, and can't disagree with the Country by country IP filtering approach as being the most logical and sensible method of ensuring their rights are observed. I still believe that an opportunity has been missed to generate income, but that's another story.
On the other hand I do wonder how solid the ground is where things are PD in the host country regards their insistence of removal. Perhaps the extent of their rights are to insist upon blocking access from remaining copyrighted territories and respecting the public domain rights of the expired territories?
While this might well be a fairly standard type approach and letter, a friend who is involved in copyright law has indicated that they may very well not have the right to enforce removal, but likely can seek damages for providing means of property theft. Call it a type of aiding in such a theft.
The simplest solution is IP block which then means that IMSLP would no longer have such a liability, and yet would still be able to produce such works within a legal framework on a country by country basis. My friend suggests that is the maximum that UE can insist upon where works are copyrighted in some territories and PD in others. Care would need to be taken with regards to individual edition's copyright status as well as those of any co-authors.
That's what I'm advised.
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Vivaldi
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Although I can also understand what UE's argument is, they cannot just barge in on Feldmahler like that without stating a specific reason. A police can't just arrest someone and say "You're under arrest for breaking the law". If they want to present a C and D letter, do it properly. State the conditions or terms that IMSLP breached, not resorting to cheap paragraphs with ambiguous meanings.