IMSLP Forums

The French magazine "Nouvel Observateur" just published an article which among other things discusses IMSLP - and gets about everything wrong. I think we should try to use the right of reply, which exists also in French law, to get them to publish a correction.

I would like to get some feedback on some key points. I will then post to the French forum, in the hope of finding a native speaker who is willing to write the actual text for us. The main point on which I would like some input is copyright related (which is why I posted the thread in this forum).

1) The article claims that it is possible to download Ravel's "Bolero", but that it would be illegal for French citizens. On our site however it is tagged as PD in the EU. Is there any truth to their claim?
2) At any rate, it is currently not possible to download the Bolero, since it is non-PD in the US. How should we explain the block reason in our reply?

Other points:
3) They claim that after the UE incident, the project sought refuge in Canada where copyright laws are more "flexible". In fact, the project was always based in Canada and operated under Canadian laws, which UE didn't like. Laws are not more "flexible", but copyright terms are shorter.
4) They claim that we are a "branch of Wikipedia", which is utter nonsense.
5) They suggest SMA as an alternative. Maybe we should mention that SMA actually copied our database, and that therefore there is not much (if anything at all) to be found at SMA which isn't available here. Or should we omit this point?

1.) Yes, that piece is under copyright in France due to the French-specific war-time extensions allowed for Ravel (since he served in WWI), however it is PD in the EU.
2.) I wouldn't mention the reason, because it won't be permanent.

Well, it's understandable that people might think IMSLP was part of Wikipedia -- even beyond the Wikimedia software, one can get to/link to an IMSLP page with the Scores: prefix (similar to Wikipedia: on WP).
I've even seen a review that said "As part of the International Music Library Project, Wikipedia hosts a complete catalog of Liszt" or something.

Professional journalists should really have higher standards than that. It's not like they would have to look any further than our "About" page - or the Wikipedia article on IMSLP for that matter - to find out that it is owned by an entirely different company. Unfortunately, inaccuracies of this kind are actually very common in the press.

I think the SMA should be mentioned, because it shows that their logic (and research) is quite questionable.

Not to mention the accusations SMA made about the IMSLP on Wikipedia.

Unfortunately, inaccuracies of this kind are actually very common in the press.

And much worse... sadly. This is (almost) as badly misreported as UE's attack on IMSLP was under-researched (or for that matter, how poor the prosecution was in the PirateBay trial).

I personally agree with writing to them to correct it, and as much as I'd like to confront SMA, does it really help IMSLP to get into a fight?

It's not a fight -- it's a simple statement of fact -- they get most of their material from IMSLP, and charge for it when it's available free elsewhere. If stated simply and without emotion, there's nothing to fight about. They can't deny it.

daphnis wrote:1.) Yes, that piece is under copyright in France due to the French-specific war-time extensions allowed for Ravel (since he served in WWI), however it is PD in the EU.

Not exactly. The fact that he did serve (a few months in 1916) doesn't matter. And, for this piece (pub. 1928), it's only because of WWII, and because he was French and the work was published by a French publisher (Durand, now part of Universal).
For us the Boléro remains protected until May 2016, like all of Ravel post-1921 pieces (Pre-1921 Ravel pieces until October 2022)... although it's PD in the rest of the EU.

In France we are right now in the middle of a big political debate about the "loi Hadopi" - with that law, of course focused on mp3 and DVD issues, the government wants to force the DSL providers to cut off the Internet access of people that would be convinced of illegal downloading, without any trial - the decision would be taken by a new, special governmental agency.
One potential danger is, that sites like IMSLP could be put on some black list, because of assumptions like those in that article, or informations given by "friendly" lobbies...

It's not a fight -- it's a simple statement of fact -- they get most of their material from IMSLP, and charge for it when it's available free elsewhere. If stated simply and without emotion, there's nothing to fight about. They can't deny it.

Yes but actively challenging them could just make us look petty. IMSLP is strong enough to drown them out, all we have to do is get a better Google search standing. SMA is unlikely to be an competitor to IMSLP in the near future, IMO it would be better to take the higher ground.

Pierre, thanks for the clarification. Could you expound a bit on the French copyright laws regarding composers' wartime compositions and the terms/extensions there-attached?

Certainly.
These term extensions have been created by laws in 1919 and 1951, that were intended to compensate the losses caused by the wars in the commercial use of all already published and still protected works. The principle is to skip the wars' durations while calculating post mortem term; in other words one have to add these durations to the normal term (at that time 50 years pma, 70 since 1985).
For that purpose, the WWars' durations have been defined in a extremely large manner:
WWII from Sept. 3rd, 1939 to Jan. 1st, 1948 --> 8 years + 120 days for all works published before 1948;
WWI from Aug. 2nd, 1918 to Jan. 1st, 1921 --> 6 years + 152 days for all works pub. before 1921; + the WWII duration = 14 years + 252 days for pre-1921 works.

This applies only to music: for other kind of works the strict 70y term applies (since the EU harmonization in 1995, and a Cassation Court ruling in 2007).

These extensions cannot apply to works whose origination country and author citizenship are outside the EU (in that case, following the Berne rule, term in France = origination country's term, with a 70y maximum);
Although not very clear in the law, they also shouldn't apply for works whose origin is in an EU country (term = 70y).

There is another term extension for authors/composers that died in active service ("mort pour la France") with 30 extra years! (ex: Jehan Alain)

That's not very simple, and the fact is that few people in the French musical area do understand the issue!
If you read French, see http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prorogations_de_guerre (I did most of it...)


If the IMSLP staff wants to (but last year Feldmahler was not in favor of my proposal, and I can understand why), I would be happy to contribute with the addition of something like a NON-PD-FR template (or NON-PD-FR{expirydate}) to all concerned composers and works (those French, still protected in France, but PD in the rest of the EU (and since a while in Canada!) - between life+70 and life+85). This could help preventing any negative action against IMSLP, here in France.

That was most interesting and helpful Pierre. I am a bit hesitant to start going beyond our present three basic territories for any automated calculation of copyright terms simply because we'd soon end up with more than 100 different systems of calculation. Just out of curiosity, do these wartime additions also apply to German, English, and Russian composers - or only to French composers like Ravel or Alain? What about a case like Erik Satie, who died before WW II (1925) but whose work would fall under the WW I provisions. Did Satie enter the French public domain in 2003 or 2004 (76 years pma)?

The French wartime extensions definitely can't apply to Russian composers - nor to English or German ones, although some (misinformed, or misinforming) people say it applies to EU composers. (But the 2007 ruling said the term should never be more than 70 years, unless it was more than 70y before July 1995 - and before 1995 the extensions never applied to any foreign country, including the EU, according to the Berne shorter term rule.
Exception: the extensions could apply to a work by a foreign compose IF the work was first published in France.

For Satie: remember that if he died before WWII, his works were protected during that war, so the extension apply.
So: for works pub. until 1920-12-31: 1926-01-01 + 70y + 6y & 152d (WWI) + 8y & 120d (WWII) = (protected until) 2010-10
For works pub. after 1921-01-01: 1926-01-01 + 70y + 8y & 120d (WWII) = (PD since) 2004-05

For IMSLP: I know this could lead to 100 systems. But why not? This would create technical problems, but not unfeasible. On an other hand, I don't think there will be 100 systems. That's pure theory! Today IMSLP makes a choice, and another, larger-but-not-that-much choice could be done. Apart from Mexico/India/Côte-d'Ivoire and a few other different (general) rules, most of the others use the general 50 or (extended) 70 rules. Although not American, IMSLP does care for the US special rules, why not for some others?
In fact, I think only to a special, work-applying system for exceptions to the general rules. This could apply for France, but I think also for Australia for some composers, and maybe in a few countries. National contributors should work on their national problems within a special project, with the aim of providing to national visitors the information... and preventing any UE-style national (il)legal troubles. But if no national knows or wants to do the job, there would be nothing and it won't be worse as today. With the exception of Canada, the importance of the issue is proportional to the amount of visitors for each country, to the importance of each nation's repertoire (forgive me, but I believe French XXth c. repertoire is quite important!) and to each country's legal and political pressure on that subject.