IMSLP Forums

I just noticed this site...

http://www.imslp.ru/index.php

Is this related to IMSLP?

Generoso wrote:Is this related to IMSLP?

I found some of my imslp scans there... Can we call this "related to"?

I confirm. It has mine too ! It seems to have all the scores available from the original IMSLP, but without mentioning who scanned them and all that stuff.

I downloaded some scores from imslp.ru (from imslp.org), but I couldn´t open them.

That site is completely unaffiliated with Project Petrucci LLC (it's also unaffiliated with IMSLP-US and IMSLP-EU). It's been there for at least a couple years, I think, and I'm not sure there's anything that can be done about it - I don't think IMSLP is a registered trademark or anything, so it's debatable whether there is any legal recourse that could be taken. In any case, aside from the Russian-language interface I'm not sure what advantage one could possibly get by visiting it, since it seems to have lost a lot of the non-score information from the real IMSLP and you can't even open PDFs in your browser window.

Notenschreiber wrote:I downloaded some scores from imslp.ru (from imslp.org), but I couldn´t open them.

You can download a score and store it somewhere, but if you click on it afterwards your computer is puzzled because the name has no pdf extension. So change this name and append ".pdf". Also replace commas in the name by underscores or similar.

KGill wrote:That site is completely unaffiliated with Project Petrucci LLC (it's also unaffiliated with IMSLP-US and IMSLP-EU). It's been there for at least a couple years, I think, and I'm not sure there's anything that can be done about it - I don't think IMSLP is a registered trademark or anything, so it's debatable whether there is any legal recourse that could be taken. In any case, aside from the Russian-language interface I'm not sure what advantage one could possibly get by visiting it, since it seems to have lost a lot of the non-score information from the real IMSLP and you can't even open PDFs in your browser window.

In many countries, beside the Trademark law, there are laws against unfair competition and laws against the theft of data bases, which laws would be very helpful in the present situation. I do not know whether it is the case in Russia and I would not suggest it is appropriate to bring a suit there ; that would cost a lot of money for an uncertain result.
I had no problem yesterday to download pdfs from that site. They open perfectly. Maybe it is a question of version of the pdf reader.

This made me laugh (from the base, bottom left, of every page of imslp.ru):
"права защищены" means "All rights reserved" or "All rights protected".

x 10,000

Jean-Séb wrote:I had no problem yesterday to download pdfs from that site. They open perfectly. Maybe it is a question of version of the pdf reader.

I meant that one couldn't just view them in one's browser window - you have to download them and open them on your hard drive, or at least I had to. IMO one of the many conveniences of IMSLP is that it lets you open scores in a new tab so you don't have to switch to a separate program, but maybe I'm in the minority here (not sure how browsers other than Chrome handle it)...

Today Í can open the pdf´s, after storing and in the browser (firefox). I don´t know, what yesterday happened. But the sheet music from imslp.ru is often incomplete.
For example: Oboeconcerto of Reichenauer B major: no score, no viola. no violins II. This site makes no sense.

Aside from use of the name IMSLP, what problem does this site pose?

All they're doing is (poorly) mirroring a bunch of public domain content. The whole point of the public domain is that you can do with the information as you please. Unless their attempts to scrape IMSLP are causing issues with the IMSLP servers, I see nothing wrong with what their doing.

Actually many countries recognize there are rights in a data base, even if the data are public domain, because they ackowledge that the constitution of the data base has necessitated work, ideas, etc. The IMSLP collection is thus entitles rights in these countries.
However, since the goal of the genuine IMSLP is disseminating music, the Russian IMSLP serves the same goal and it can hardly seen an interest for IMSLP to bring action against the second.

haydenmuhl wrote:Aside from use of the name IMSLP, what problem does this site pose?

At present none, but in the past I have seen sites like icking.music.archive.com, icking_music_archive.org etc. trying to benefit from users mistyping icking-music-archive.org.
They had nasty ads, popups, etc. And I don't recommend your trying ismlp.org!

Jean-Séb wrote:Actually many countries recognize there are rights in a data base, even if the data are public domain, because they ackowledge that the constitution of the data base has necessitated work, ideas, etc. The IMSLP collection is thus entitles rights in these countries.

This seems a lot like the "sweat of the brow" copyright that many here decry. For example, see this thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5075&p=26462

Thank you for the link and the interesting discussion there, but the legal grounds are totally different between the rights for a data base and the rights for reproductions of images. Their only common point is that many complain about them!