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Vacuously variegated vagaries vvvv...
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| | Current Location: | Parkville | | Subject: | Another victory for threats of litigation (and FUD) over the public domain | | Time: | 03:20 pm | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/niaha/kitty/ankangryg.gif) annoyed |
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| The International Sheet Music Library Project (IMSLP) is by no means the first or only attempt to gather together public domain sheet music of a large variety of composers whose works arguably represent the foundation of Western art music, or classical music. It only happened to be one of the best organised technically, and was rapidly becoming one of the largest such sites on the Internet. That the website was conceived and administered by a Canadian university student is a testament to the empowerment of the individual that the Internet is able to provide.
Where IMSLP seems to have over-reached itself, is in the realm of national and international copyright. Canadian law has resolutely stayed at copyright for the term of the author's life plus fifty years, while much of Europe is now at life plus 70. The wedge of 20 extra years for an author's work to be exploitable in Europe was sufficient for at least one European publisher to send cease-and-desist letters and an associated ultimatum from their Canadian legal representatives, to prevent IMSLP from offering works that while in the public domain in Canada, were still under copyright in Europe. Despite offers of legal assistance from several legal departments at Canadian universities should the matter have proceeded to litigation, in the end the university student capitulated and took down the entire site.
It is worth mentioning that IMSLP operated two main servers, one holding works in the public domain under Canadian law (life+50) and hosted in Canada, while another server located in the United States held works published prior to 1923, deemed as public domain there in accordance with the historically-enacted laws that emphasised the date of publication rather than the lifespan of the author. By having two complementary ranges of scores available, the site aimed to offer "the most public domain music to the citizens of any particular country, as permitted by law".
It was this generosity that came unstuck: despite the site having an elaborate copyright tagging system that would give end-users notice of compositions that fall under copyright in certain jurisdictions, there was no technical means in place to block downloads as prevention of copyright violation. The second cease-and-desist letter mentioned that IMSLP had not implemented IP filtering, despite this being a poor safeguard technically: both easily subverted and porous. For most of the centuries-old public domain works, such means would not be necessary as the works are regarded as public domain more or less everywhere: instead the whole site has been undone by the works in the ambiguous copyright state generated by a lack of "harmonisation" between different national jurisdictions.
What is lamentable about the demise of the IMSLP is that many of the works that the European publishers objected to are ostensibly in the public domain in Europe: Alban Berg, Leos Janacek, Ottorino Respighi and Gustav Mahler all died prior to 1937 (the crucial date for "life+70"), and all but one of the other composers named in the cease-and-desist letter died more than fifty years ago: the sole exception, who died in 1964, is represented by pre-1923 works in the public domain in the United States, and hosted there. Perhaps in the case of Mahler, who died 96 years ago, we see that the publisher had their Mexican interests in mind: the copyright term in Mexico covers the duration of the author's life, and 100 years afterwards.
One well-respected and knowledgeable contributor to the site, with wide experience in the music publishing industry, views this as just the first step in attacking the global public domain: if some multi-national corporation wanted to go to the trouble of purchasing a sovereign island nation somewhere, it could then proclaim perpetual copyright as law, and hire legal firms all over the world to enforce copyright via threats of lawsuits.
Philip Legge, 22 October 2007
© 2007 Philip Legge, under the Creative Commons share-alike licence (CC-by-sa-3.0 unported) | comments: Leave a comment   |
| | Current Music: | Emma's watching "Emma" | | Current Location: | Lygon Street | | Time: | 10:39 pm | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/niaha/kitty/ankitteng.gif) indescribable |
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| News: not much. Gloriana start rehearsing again on Monday, for which I've revivified my critical edition of the Earthquake mass and prepared a performing version. Not enough time and probably the odd mistake, but that's no problem. Also did a tidy-up on Andrew R's version of the piece by Clare Maclean.
Nice lunch today at Enlightened Cuisine with Peter Tribe and Katherine Tozer who are currently in town, going back to Christchurch tomorrow: ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) daharja and I naturally went for the dish with whole dried chillies...
The first few compositions for ROCS' second concert have begun trickling in: a set of secular Latin songs arrived on Tuesday, and I'm expecting several anthems and motets soon. | | comments: 11 comments or Leave a comment |
| I don't believe it... despite only completing two of the tasks so far, I've started on a way larger project that can in no way be completed any time soon...
Somebody kill me... put me out of my (eventual) misery... | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| Well, I got one of those things done over the weekend... Hooray for sloth.
On Saturday, we met with the usual suspects (various family, friends, and godparents) for dragon_and_dawn's 2nd birthday picnic on the State Library lawn, followed by joining in the Walk against Global Warming from the Town Hall down to Birrarung Marr, where various other friends were spotted here and there in the crowd.
After that, we were too tired to attend Beltane frivolities (sorry asmodel) and Emma had come out in a very nice sunburn patch around her neck. Sunday was even worse (or do I mean better?) for slothfulness.
I recently discovered They Might Be Giant's podcast... beware, severely weird shit awaits you... (iTunes).
In addition, I've begun ripping the remainder of my CD collection, starting with the ones which I had not so much as pulled from their sleeves: so far the combined mass of music has reached in excess of 3800 items from 500 albums, lasting 4 hours short of a fortnight of continuous music (and 22 GB on the hard disk, mostly at 160 kbps). The rate of increase will slow now that I'm going through the others more systematically and ripping the things I skipped last time.
Gloriana tonight (so no chance on dealing with the other unfinished things, drat it). At least there's no ROCS tomorrow night... | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| What news? Not terribly much: I find that I've been too tired after the punishing end of September/start of October, and have taken most of the remainder of October to recover. I've not been terribly productive on my own projects, as work has been fairly full on (despite it being exam time) and so here we are in November already...
Emma has a new job with CGU starting Monday week. She's even going to find out what CGU stands for at some point, now that they've offered her work...
Various projects to-do list:
- Look at chapters 21 - 40 of wizard_foots's novel;
- Finish piano reduction of bars 621 to 707 for HBS and send off to the UK;
- Finish looking at Tom O'D.'s new realisation of the Mozart Requiem;
- Get back to proof-reading Symphony;
- Finish composing Quodlibet.
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| | Time: | 10:00 am | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/niaha/kitty/anksadg.gif) discontent |
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| Not happy (and not particularly keen about talking about it either).
So, nothing to see here, move along... | | |
| | Current Music: | howling wind atop the Doug McDonell building | | Current Location: | Parkville, Victoria, Australia | | Subject: | A new realisation of Mozart's Requiem | | Time: | 02:15 pm | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/niaha/kitty/ankhappyg.gif) pleased |
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| The composer in Ireland I've been corresponding with for some time (read here) has finished his realisation of the Mozart Requiem, and sent me a copy of the full score to read through. It looks good on the page, although not terribly adventurous - I might change my mind once I have time to give it a proper read-through :) In other words, the newly composed sections don't appear out of kilter with the rest of the work.
No other news - the ROCS concert went reasonably okay. Some of "Space Tale" went astray (the band not watching or thinking). After two weeks of continuous rehearsals virtually every single day or night, I've been happily out of it for several days... and looking forward to not rehearsing tonight. | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | Clare McLean/John Cage ceiling fan mix | | Current Location: | Parkville, Victoria, Australia | | Subject: | ROCS attendance = DOOM | | Time: | 01:15 pm | | Current Mood: | cynical |
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| Over a week ago, I had written:
As for the other gig, it seems the usual RMIT apathy jinx has struck... so far have had only ONE e-mail offer from the MonMUCS community to help out with the singing...
It turns out that person can't do the gig now, and only discovered so this morning. Fortunately I have had a few other people jump on board since then, but its still frustrating as hell because half of them didn't come and rehearse on Tuesday. It's a good thing I'm largely past caring whether the performance is good or not... | | comments: Leave a comment |
| As many of you know, I do a lot of music editing: I not only enjoy it, but I know it's useful to many other people around the world through websites like the Choral Public Domain Library. The principal e-mail address listed on CPDL is my netscape address, which results in me getting a variety of comments, questions, and suggestions from all over the world. I've received e-mail from Iceland, the very tip of the Northwest Territories of Canada, from all over North America and Europe; even one or two from Africa and South America.
For example: this, from an ex-member of SUMS now living in the United States:
I've just come across your wonderful scores of Dixit Dominus.
I lost all my music in Hurricane Katrina, including a complete score of Dixit Dominus I'd had since my school days. What a treat it was to find your PDF, Scorch and Sibelius files. You've done a beautiful job with these and I wanted to thank you for helping replace this part of my music collection.
( More examples under the cut... )
So I am rather chuffed by all that :) | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | Stravinsky, the Laudate Dominums from Psalm 150 | | Current Location: | Carlton, Victoria, Australia | | Subject: | A meta-blogular comment masquerading as a blog entry? | | Time: | 01:00 am | | Current Mood: | semi-recumbent |
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| Instead of blogging myself very often - I've been incredibly remiss with this journal, to the point where I received a "nudge" to remind me that I hadn't posted in 51 weeks - of late I've taken to reading other people's blogs. In practice I've had so many projects on the boil that not much time has been at leisure to contemplatively record my musings; it takes longer to write your opinion down than to read someone else's. Anyway, at some point last week I noticed a comment on one of The Age's blogs, and said to myself - I know who that is! (The person I know in real life shared the same name and interests; if I say the word "salsa" some of you in the AICSAverse may well instantly jump to the conclusion, mavisgrizltits.)
So anyway, having outed myself as a lurker at this particular blog with a rather lengthy introductory post summing up a fair number of my thoughts on the subject at hand, I thought it was well worth re-posting it here with some explanation of the context; thus treating the blog comment as worthy of being a blog posting in its own right. The writer of the particular Age blog, Sam, is a bloke who tried to do the "walk a mile in the other guy's shoes" - or to be more accurate, to walk a mile "in her stilletto heels". He tried to dress up as "Samantha" for the duration of a weekend in Sydney, to try to experience what women have to put up with from male attitudes in daily life. The results weren't exactly what he'd intended - he didn't pass terribly well for being a woman, and so was instead the target of a bit of random male hostility directed at transgendered women, but neither was it the failure as described by those conscientious journos at Today Tonight - who incredibly, showed to the nation that they can't spell the word "impostor". Tossers.
( Comment posted to one of The Age blogs ) | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Tags: | apathy, jinx, whinge | | Current Music: | Mozart Piano concerto no. 5, the alternate Rondo movement | | Current Location: | Work (where else?) | | Subject: | Monday Morning Grrrrrrrrrrrr | | Time: | 10:48 am | | Current Mood: | annoyed |
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| The alleged choir that I occasionally wave my hands in front of (conduct seems a misleading term, given the typical level of response to my ministrations) is allegedly participating in a "Friday the 13th" concert in a little over a week from now, as well as contributing a disappointingly small number of singers to the full-on Carmina Burana with the Royal Melbum Phil. and MUCS. At some earlier stage I had entertained a misguided notion that having such a popular work as the end-goal of a rehearsal bracket would help the choir bolster its generally insufficient attendance. Such a foolish idea. The RMP orchestra had a cracking read-through the pieces yesterday, so at least this gig is going to be good. Buy tickets!
As for the other gig, it seems the usual RMIT apathy jinx has struck. I have sent out no less than fifteen e-mails to various people over the last week, e-mail lists, etc., to get this thing organised (including an lj-post on aicsachat) and so far have had only ONE e-mail offer from the MonMUCS community to help out with the singing; only ONE instrumentalist prepared to play; and only two other people prepared to acknowledge that we're doing this thing (thanks tigerdenbodu and mavisgrizltits).
Annoyed. (That's the polite word for it, anyway.) | | comments: 10 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | psuedo-John Cage fan-heater whirring music | | Subject: | Various mumblings and vagaries | | Time: | 12:05 am | | Current Mood: | cranky |
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| daharja and dragon_and_dawn dropped in today, which brightened me up from the funk I've been in for the recent past.
Daharja is trying to twist my arm re: NaNoWriMo. Maybe writing a 50,000 word doorstop will be somwhat therapeutic: I never intended to stop writing fiction, but have hardly written a thing since about third year Uni. Too many irons in other fires, what!
We had a good discussion on the future (and past) for Harry Potter - don't worry, this should remain a spoiler-free zone - and after consulting the HP Lexicon website, I had a singularly good idea for an essay on a topic which goes back to Book One, and is strikingly unresolved thus far. I'm including the text here since if my e-mail gets mangled I've cited this lj as an alternative source. Warning, it's long...
( Quidditch through the Eighties (or, the Unusual Case of Charles Weasley) ) | | comments: 7 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | Grrrrrrrr... | | Time: | 02:00 am | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/niaha/kitty/anktiredg.gif) tired |
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| The good:
Went clothes shopping with daharja, winikoff, and dragon_and_dawn.
Emma cooked a fantastic risotto tonight, which of course meant opening a bottle of wine for the recipe.
Brother David has been in town for Southern "Hibearnation".
As alluded to before, reorganisation of the mess of stereo cables and other kibble, which had been really pissing me off.
There's a warm cat sharing my lap with the laptop!
The bad:
Incredibly bad hay fever today, but it's been fairly persistently bad for most of the last month.
Clumsy klutz dropped his lunch on the ground today, when he was really hungry.
Computer hard disk still incredibly flaky (and the techs have proven themselves incapable of rectifying intermittent faults) to the extent where I lost two hours of work with a file corruption, and recovering back to that same point took significantly longer.
Last but not least, still depressed and having panic attacks.
I suppose I really should go to sleep now... | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | The hoons speeding along Lygon Street | | Time: | 11:25 pm | | Current Mood: | getting sleepy |
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| Thanks guys for the positive comments (you know who you are).
It being a public holiday today, I got up early to do some useful things around the house, but didn't bother getting dressed all day. This is a process described as "pottering", but as it turned out I forgot to do the one really necessary thing I should have done, which was to move some of the furniture about that is annoying me located where it currently is.
The hope that the day would finish uninterrupted while I remained in my dressing gown ended up backfiring somewhat when friends of Emma's dropped by to collect some things.
The article regarding the vocal score for the Gothic is wholly revised and sent off; three pages of rather complicated full score were transcribed, if not as many as would have been wished; and I finished with eight out of eight from the weekend's footy tipping, after two weeks of utter crud, so hopefully it was everyone else's turn to crash. There are three things still listed in the Palm pilot as things that I should do when I have some spare time; maybe next weekend. (This is good - a lot more were listed before, which I had found I was incapable of acting upon at the time.) | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | The soundtrack to the "Pagans" show on ABC | | Subject: | Long overdue update | | Time: | 09:30 pm | | Current Mood: | quirky |
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| Looking at the recent entries for lj/~phi1ip, it appears I've neglected writing here for some seven relatively eventful months. What to say? Well, I went past 12,175 days in age (that's 33 1/3 RPM^H^H^H years). ( IV, work, etc. )
Some of my pet projects are going along reasonably well. The Havergal Brian symphony I started last year is two-thirds transcribed and hopefully I will be able to knock over the third and longest movement tomorrow with the public holiday. HB is possibly going to be represented at a future IVCF, which involves the preparation of a new vocal score by typesetters in the UK; as a result of my agitating a copy of the old VS is being sent to me so I may proofread the new one. The e-mails I've already exchanged with the UK are already deemed worthy of refashioning into a newsworthy article, which I'll start revising when I get tired of editing notes. Other scores, like the Mozart/Berlioz/etc. mostly on hold.
I am trying to suppress my capitalistic urge to rush out and buy an iPod mini (having twiddled with my co-worker's silver model). I am still probably in official disfavour in the Lygon Street household - one night at winikoff, daharja, and dragon_and_dawn's, Emma's iPod fell from my trouser pocket as I was getting into the passenger seat, and we then reversed over it. winikoff found it the next morning. It still works, but whenever the iPod needs to spin the hard disk, you hear a nice loud *whine*. Me bad.
And there is new Doctor Who on the telly. Nirvana. | | comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Time: | 10:25 am | | Current Mood: | tired |
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| Rather tired after returning from a long weekend in Tasmania. Rehearsal last night, for two out of four concerts in the next month; I will be singing with Gloriana in a free concert at St Michael's (Collins Street, Melbourne) this Saturday, of Cipriano de Rore's Missa Præter rerum seriem.
Here, for those who are interested, are the remaining items in the 25 songs meme...
1. Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus - Franz Schubert, Mass in A flat (D 678), King's College, Willcocks.
2. I don't want to grow anything in my heart
I don't want to write all these things in the sand
3. Magnificat anima mea Dominum - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Solemn Vespers of the Confessor (K 339), MUCS, conducted by Foetus
4. Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen - Johannes Brahms, German Requiem, ORR, John Eliot Gardiner
5. Maudit canon du fort Saint-Ange,
Pour que la langue te démange, (from a grrrrrrrande French opera of the 1830s)
( And 20 more works of similar obscurity ) | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | Memey thing | | Time: | 01:02 pm | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/niaha/kitty/ankfoodg.gif) hungry |
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| The instructions for this meme are as follows, but somehow, I don't think they're really meant for my type of music collection...
1. Put your playlist on shuffle.
2. Post the first lines to the first 25 songs to come up (along with these instructions).
3. Have people guess the songs and artists in comments to the post.
4. A couple of days later, post the answers to the ones people guessed correctly. Post the first two lines of the ones no-one got and get people to guess again.
5. Repeat, adding the next line to the unguessed songs each time, until they're all guessed/you've posted the whole song/you've gotten bored/no-one's going to get the damn thing if you don't tell them.
So here we go. Extra marks if you can guess the performers as well as the composers!
( 25 first lines from my music collection )
Hmm, pretty much as I expected - I had to play through about 60 or 70 tracks in order to get 25 which actually *had* any lyrics! | | comments: 18 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | Om mane padme hum | | Time: | 02:40 pm | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/niaha/kitty/ankthinkg.gif) contemplative |
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| ༀམཎཔདཧ
Boy, isn't Unicode fun! Unfortunately, I can't put in the vowel modifiers without breaking things:
ༀམཎིཔདྨེཧུཾ
Hummmmm. | | comments: Leave a comment |
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Vacuously variegated vagaries vvvv...
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![[mood icon]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/niaha/kitty/ankawakeg.gif){kind=small}
awake