Old sheets of music and copyright

[J. Michael]

"Understood. However, my assumption was that this particular edition of Romeo and Juliet that I bought at Barnes and Noble might have a unique cover, perhaps flourishes aroung the pages, maybe those giant funky letters at the begining of a chapter -- all that creative stuff. While this is not "new authorship" it would certainly be "creative" enough to be copyrightable. The threshold for creativity is actually pretty low. See Alfred Bell v Catalda Fine Arts. A facsimile of such a work would be infringing."

Maybe. But other cases have used a higher threshold. The line seems pretty blurry. If in doubt, don't copy it. In your example you could OCR it though.

"How do you know that? Unless these scans are directly from pre-1923 works, or from some other identifiable public domain source, they may NOT be public domain."

True but I've looked at about 5 or 10 percent of the pieces and recognize that they are from pre-23 versions. The webowner obviously did not scan the covers or record the publication dates so that may not be apparent to others. However I cannot comment on the majority I've not seen. Most pieces on the site are scan-to-pdf, but a few others are transcribed from pre-23 versions. (they are identified by the site owner and are much smaller in size) If no new performance markings, instructions or other original authorship were added, they are likely PD as well. This is not advice. An independent evaluation must be made by yourself.

All that said, it would not be nice to copy the hard work of the site owner. He is offering all this for free. Why would you (the original poster) want to rip him off and make your own CD? He already offers one for a reasonable price. There may be other laws other than copyright you need to consider too.

If you do it, someone might do it to you too. Don't cry about it then. All such sites might then disappear or become members-only sites with very restrictive license agreements.

 

[J. Michael]

PS -- Why not just ask the site for their consent? Alternately, try here: The Mutopia Project