IMSLP Forums

No it is not correct to say that unpublished works are out of copyright in every country. In the UK they are certainly not out of copyright unless the copyright holder has released them into the public domain. In the UK it will not be until 2040 that unpublished works will have the same copyright du...

Questions that need answering are: 1. When was it published? 2. Who, if anyone, edited the edition? 3. If there was an editor are they dead? 4. If the editor is dead when did they die? You also need to specify in what country you live because that has a dramatic effect on what you can do yourself be...

Are they claiming the fee based on copyright or on their ownership of the physical object though? Libraries are perfectly free, subject to national laws to the contrary, to charge fees for access to materials they own.

It should be noted that the 25 year term referred to for the UK is not anything to do with whether the edition is an "urtext" or not. There is no such concept in British copyright law. Something either gets the full life of the author plus 70 years protection (subject to pseudonymous and a...

The UK provision is because we are in a transitional period between the situation in Australia, where unpublished works enjoy perpetual copyright protection, and having everything follow the same rules, ie life of the author plus 70 years for most works. Up until the coming into force of the 1988 Ac...

You're forgetting the transitional provisions of the 1988 Act. Paragraph 12(4) of Schedule 1 to the 1988 Act lays out the provisions as they apply to existing works: "(1) The following provisions have effect with respect to the duration of copyright in existing works." "(4) Copyright ...

Wrong.

In the UK unpublished materials are still in copyright until the end of 2039. Materials published for the first time less than 70 years ago are still in copyright.

I misread the earlier posts about Neilsen's date of death. For that you have my sincere apologies. If he did indeed die in 1931 then that alters his status in the EU for works published during his lifetime. All works by Neilsen published during his lifetime are out of copyright in the EU and have be...

In the United States yes. Elsewhere no thanks to the editor if the editor made substantive changes.

No, it was not public domain in Denmark in 1996. I say again, the EU directive mandated retrospective extension of copyright. Anything which was by an author who died between 1926 and 1945 came back into copyright. It is not a good law, but it was in the directive and thus had to be implemented in n...

You are wrong about the EU. The UK most certainly allows people to release something into the public domain. I cannot speak for the other countries but look at the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 and you will see nowhere which says that copyright cannot be waived completely. In the UK some mo...

You are wrong about two aspects: 1. It is in copyright in the United States. It was published there after 1923 and is a foreign work which was in copyright when the 1996 provisions came into force. 2. Copyright was retrospectively extended in Denmark. Part of the EU directive stipulated that where a...