IMSLP Forums

On the site of the HAAB Weimar there are some nice scans of PD music.
But do we have to care about this:

Der Inhalt dieser Website (Bilder und Texte) ist rechtlich geschützt. Er darf für private wissenschaftliche Zwecke ausgedruckt und heruntergeladen werden. Eine Veröffentlichung ist ohne schriftliche Zustimmung der Bibliothek nicht gestattet. Eine kommerzielle oder institutionelle Nutzung dieser Inhalte ist ohne vorheriges schriftliches Einverständnis der Bibliothek nicht gestattet. Dies betrifft im einzelnen Verkauf, Leihe, Lizenzierung, Vervielfältigung, Verbreitung und dauerhafte Archivierung in gedruckter oder elektronischer Form. [...]

(http://ora-web.swkk.de/digimo_online/digimo.entry)

So, they're claiming copyright on scans they made of public domain works. While such claims may be valid in parts of the EU - I don't know for sure - they have no validity of any sort in Canada or in the USA. Our official policy is that we completely reject all such claims. Where does it end? If these bozos had their way, there would be no such thing as public domain at all. Not only are ridiculous claims of "authorship" (where there is no authorship) being made, the claims are moreover being made by an entity which receives state funding! Must be nice....they get paid either way. They're really in the wrong profession - Wall Street would be a more suitable place for them. You seem to know a great deal about French copyright, what is the status of such claims there?

Oh, this is just the music I wanted to hear!

Well, I think I have a good knowledge of French copyright law regarding post mortem durations, but this facsimile problem is quite unclear. My understanding (since some quite recent jurisprudence, seeming to revert previous ones) is that our law says that a photographic reproduction needs some artistic work (light, point of view, etc.) in order to claim protection.
But... this still did not enter the people's minds. And there is a lack of specific jurisprudence (involving libraries, or scores).

Moreover, this is a cultural problem. Especially for music, we do not have any translation for "fair use". In most English-speaking countries there's a common principle, that any governmental document is PD - a few years ago the French government made a law, saying that every state document (or law!) is totally copyrighted... France is always very proud of its Ministry of Culture. But now, the most of their energy is spent securing the major label's income...
So usually any French (or German...) library website do claim entire copyright on the material they made available. I believe that's illegal, but who wants to be sued in order to prove this? (This is somehow like IMSLP's post-1923 blocking, isn't it?)

Let me tell a short story. In France, in every conservatory you can see huge signs saying "it is illegal to photocopy any score" etc. Since 20 years the music publisher's lobby say this again and again, no matter of what could be Public Domain. In order to simply be able to work, most music schools pay special SEAM stamps, to be put on every single photocopied page. For copyrighted music, this makes some sense, but one day I called the SEAM, saying: "I'm a teacher, I want to copy some Bach music from a Dover reprint - and a friend told me I may do it freely because it's all PD." - They replied: "No, you have to buy and put the stamps." What a shame!

At one time, most composers, before doing only music, made some law studies - in order to obey their father...
Now maybe we should.

That's really interesting. Here in the USA, the music publishers printed up similar posters - though they didn't go so far as to infer that all music is under copyright. Nevertheless, they have managed to frighten a number of libraries into thinking that all music is under copyright. There is a clique of publishers here who behave as if there should be no such thing as public domain, but there are also the reprint publishers - who are quite fast to have something in print if it is out of copyright and sufficient demand. The real irony is that some of the companies who look down their nose at places like Dover actually reprint public domain items themselves on occasion.

Neither France or Germany seems to have a native equivalent of Kalmus or Dover. Perhaps the situation you describe has something to do with this. There was a huge lawsuit against Dover in Germany back in the 1980s about the reprints of Breitkopf scores. Dover won that one before the German high court, which basically affirmed the limitations of section 70 of the German law.

pierre.chepelov wrote: [...] In order to simply be able to work, most music schools pay special SEAM stamps, to be put on every single photocopied page [...]

Please read my post about SEAM in the Francais-French forum.