Legal Threat by European Publisher is Challenge to Public Domain’s Scope, Observers Say
A threatening letter from a European music publisher to a Canadian Web site that provided classical sheet music is sparking fears among some academics and lawyers that the public domain may drastically shrink. Vienna-based Universal AG told the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) that the site violated its copyrights by publishing the works of deceased European composers still covered by Europe’s death-plus-70 years copyright term. In Canada, the term is death plus 50 years. Since sites have to consider the laws where the copyright resides and not just the laws where site servers reside, the incident calls into question whether “public domain really only applies in an offline world,” University of Ottawa Law Professor Michael Geist told us.
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The IMSLP, a free wiki maintained by college student Xiao-Guang Guo, offered classical sheet music that had entered the public domain. The site was created as “a virtual library of public domain music scores, based on the wiki principle.” After the letter, Guo closed the site, saying, “I very unfortunately simply do not have the energy or money necessary to implement the terms in the cease and desist [demand] in any other way.” But he promised that the site “is not dead.”
Universal AG counsel Ken Clark told Guo “the lack of safeguards on the IMSLP from infringing Canadian and European copyright law” constitutes a “collective effort to breach copyright.” Clark demanded only that Guo stop publishing copyrighted works of Universal AG composers and employ a filtering tool that would block non-Canadian users. But Guo, a student with limited funds and time, opted to take the whole site offline. Universal AG couldn’t be reached for comment. Unlicensed sheet music and “tab” sites have faced legal threats and even lawsuits in the past few years, with a few shutdowns (WID Aug 16/06 p2).
The case won’t land in court, at least for now, but “it demonstrates the power that a legal demand letter has,” Geist said. And it suggests that online copyright law is “effectively a race to the bottom,” since any site must adhere to the longest legal copyright term in the world. Mexico’s copyright law covers death plus 100 years, so in theory, only works that fall under that term can be fully and freely published online without the potential for a lawsuit. That would seem to negate the idea of public domain altogether, Geist said. Universal AG seems to argue that “it’s not enough to be compliant with local law; they want sites with no connection to” Europe to comply as well, he said.
Ottawa-based copyright lawyer Howard Knopf agreed on his blog that “this is a big issue for the student who started all of this and it’s understandable that he has retreated. He can’t fight this alone.” Other sites like book-sharing site Project Gutenberg “could be threatened as well,” he said. The case represents a chance for organizations that “believe in the importance of the public domain” to “demonstrate that commitment,” he said.
Under the Berne convention, Canada must honor the European system of life plus 70 years for European works, Copyright Alliance Executive Director Patrick Ross told us. Ross said he’s not involved with the case but noted that Stanford University Professor Lawrence Lessig and others have pushed for changes to copyright laws to address the issue. Proposed solutions would reduce copyright term lengths or “more significantly” require registration of copyrights and not just grant them automatically, Ross said. If you have to register up front, many people wouldn’t, in Lessig’s line of reasoning, Ross said. But those approaches too have their flaws, he said.
Those not in the copyright industry “often fail to understand how international copyright works, and how important it is to have coordination among countries,” Ross said. “Without it one country that disrespects artists’ rights and is online can dismantle artists’ rights globally,” he said.