Hi, Sorry for not responding earlier to this thread; I am extremely busy at the moment, but have read the messages with interest.
I agree with all that's been written - copyright is a complete minefield, with rules varying all over the world. To try and cover all possibilities, we ask that music contributed to Mutopia fulfils two criteria: 1) The music was published before 1923 (ensures it's out of copyright in USA) 2) All copyright holders must have died more than seventy years ago, ie. the composer, arranger (if applicable) and editor (if applicable). The problem with old editions, particularly late 19th Century editions, is that you're lucky if they list the editor at all, and even when they do it's often nearly impossible to work out when he died, unless it's someone famous like Brahms or Debussy. Every so often Google throws up some pleasant surprises, but generally it's hard to find out editors' dates. As Mats has explained, Urtext editions can be problematic as the editor may have had to do lots of work to unearth the composer's "original intentions". If you have typeset from an Urtext edition, I strongly recommend checking against several other editions as well. This is what I've done with Fur Elise - the first piece I typeset for Mutopia, nearly five years ago (!) - although I have yet to add the information to the website. We no longer recommend typesetting from Urtext editions - as I said above, editions entirely out of copyright are by far the best to use. It should be noted that we (ie. I) don't have time to check the copyright of any of the music submitted. We rely on the honesty of contributors, although if the composer is obviously too recent I will reject the piece. Regarding the Mutopia discussion mailing list, it has been coming "real soon now" for far too long, and for this I apologise. Ongoing problems with the MX record of our domain name (entirely out of my control) have delayed this, which is annoying for all concerned, particularly as I've been paying for the hosting of the list since November. If the problems are not resolved in the next few weeks, I will set up the list on the hosting company's domain as it is, without worrying about having an @mutopiaproject.org address. One of the things that had worried me was whether I'd have enough time to answer questions posed on the list, but the response to this thread has persuaded me that there are plenty of people more knowledgable than I ready to jump in and answer questions, which is great! :-) Can I apologise to anyone who is waiting for their contribution to be added to Mutopia or for a reply to a private e-mail. I am incredibly busy at the moment, and have had to change my Linux distribution to get some software running for work. I haven't succeeded in getting LilyPond up and running on the new setup yet, although this should just be a question of sitting down and recompiling / reinstalling everything again. I hope to catch up on this (as well as sleeping, eating, etc.) next week! Chris -- Chris Sawer - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Mutopia team leader Free sheet music for all at Mutopia: http://www.MutopiaProject.org _______________________________________________ Lilypond-user mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
