Feel free to translate this page. I would also greatly appreciate it if someone could move the translations of the original open letter to this wiki; the original front page (with the translation links) can be found here. Due to vandalism I have protected this page. If you want to translate this page, just start a new page, and I will add a link to that page myself.
Temporary IMSLP wiki
Contents
Introduction on what happened
The International Music Score Library Project was a repository of more than 15,000 musical scores that are in the public domain here in Canada. I was forced to close the site due to circumstance after receiving lawsuit threats from music publishers that do not want the public domain to exist.
The immediate threat was from Universal Edition, a publisher in Austria. Whereas copyright in Canada lasts until 50 years after the author's death, copyright in Austria lasts 20 years longer. Universal Edition threatened to sue me, perhaps in Canada or perhaps in Austria, for violating Austrian law. There is no reason why Austrian law should apply to this site in Canada, but as a student I did not have the resources to resist even an absurd threat from a company with money to pay lawyers to attack music.
I greatly thank Richard M. Stallman for his support in this matter, and for his offer and help in writing this summary introduction (something that I had neglected).
Original open letter
This is the original open letter I posted as a response to my decision of the temporary closure of IMSLP.
Thoughts after the closure of IMSLP
This is the section that I posted on the opening of this temporary wiki.
Current IMSLP status
There have been requests for an explanation of what is going on, so I'm going to lay out the projected timeline.
Essentially, I will be meeting in person with 5 people/organizations to discuss the support and continuation of IMSLP. These will likely last into May or even June, so do not expect the site to be online until late June/July at the earliest.
Due to requests we (IMSLP admins in charge of the resurrection) have decided to regularly post updates, even if they are not conclusive. We hope this will put any thoughts of IMSLP being dead to rest in the mind of IMSLP supporters. We will here post the earliest upcoming event, and update them as new situations arise and new events are planned.
Late March/Early April - I will be testing a new portal page for the expanded IMSLP project. This expansion is scheduled to include the existing forum (with expanded scope), a new blog, and two new wikis (one for IMSLP software development, another as a companion project to IMSLP, and will extend IMSLP in the field of music education, though specifics are not yet known). When the portal page is up, I, being webdesign-impared, will need help to make it look nice... so web designers take note!
Incidentally, the blog and new wikis will probably be online before the main IMSLP wiki is brought back.
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