UE defends itself in IMSLP shutdown

As was reported a few days ago, public-domain orchestral music website IMSLP shut down after receiving a cease-and-desist notice from Universal Edition. In response to that report, we received the following from Universal Edition.

In a blog entry on your website under the headline "Copyright vultures score again" you report on the action taken by Universal Edition to prevent imslp.org from distributing copyright material on their website.

To quote your report, you write "One of the best free-sheet-music sites, the IMSLP, got killed by the copyright vultures today."

This wild accusation is simply not true.

Universal Edition requested by letter that a limited number of works be removed from the IMSLP website, as these were protected by copyright in some of the countries the IMSLP database was available in (one composer is also fully in copyright in Canada itself). IMSLP refused to remove these works over a 2 month period, and instead, in a decision incomprehensible to us, decided to close down the whole website.

The motives behind closing down the website, which as all agree contained a valuable collection of public domain music, cannot be justified by nor blamed on the demand by UE that its copyright material be removed.

...Please feel free to report the facts behing this unfortunate issue, but please check those first. UE is being used as a scapegoat to explain why the student running the service felt it necessary to go offline.

UE of course respects the perfectly valid and legal distribution of public domain material on the internet. We are however obliged to follow up violations of our copyrights.

It's certainly not Universal's fault; it's a combination of stupid copyright laws which vary from country to country, and the inability of volunteer web operators to keep up with the details. It's also true that IMSLP probably could have figured out a way to comply without shutting down.