Triumph for Public Domain, or "Take that, Universal Edition!"

You might know that the popular music download site www.imslp.org was shut down last October, the reason being that imslp.org hosted sheet music for download that, while in the public domain in Canada and the United States (copyright expires for them and us 50 years after death of the author), was not in the public domain in Austria, Spain, or Norway (70 years after composer's death, 80, 85, respectively). Universal Edition, an enormous sheetmusic company centered in Austria, threatened to sue imslp.org for copyright infringment on the grounds that Europeans could, in theory, download sheet music not in public domain in their homeland, despite the fact that imslp.org was perfectly within Canadian national law.

There is no legal reason for a European company to assert Austrian law over that of Canadian and U.S. law. There was no real debate on this matter, but the creator of imslp.org is a college student and he couldn't afford to face a legal battle. So in October, the site was taken down.

Anyone who is in college and plays a musical instrument knows exactly how hard it is to procure music. A good edition (say, some Schubert piano sonatas) will absolutely rape you in terms of price. Good editions frequently run upwards of thirty dollars, and a collection of Beethoven's sonatas can be as much as $200 if you don't want them edited and simplified. Regardless, I would happily spend money on such edition if I had such money to spend. You get what you pay for, and a $200 collection of Beethoven will last longer than you will live. But this is obviously not the case and hence Imslp.org, though frequently the editions it distributed were ancient (early 1900s, mostly) and occaisionally badly edited, at least they were free, and would last at least a few years on standard printing paper until one can save and buy high-quality editions (Henle Urtext, Wiener Urtext, etc.)

Happily for us and for public domain, Imslp.org is set to return to the e-world on 1 July 2008! It has given Universal Edition the finger and once again the largest digital music library in the world will be back online. (I'm not kidding - before closure Imslp.org had over 25,000 scores by more than 1,000 different composers)

Hooray for public domain music and hooray for Imslp.org!

Weekend! Sushi!

I finally had sushi tonight and it was delicious! Around 4:30, Emily told me she and Kyle were going out to eat and would I like to come along? You bet I would - restaurants beat Aramark hands down. The only 'problem' was, we were going to a sushi restaurant. Raw fish? Cold food? EWW! "uh....I guess I'll try it" was my reluctant response.

WOW WAS IT GOOD.

Eel, salmon, tuna, avacado, etc. So delish! It was quite expensive, but so worth it! (I'll have to go once more before the semester is over) It's very salty and hard to eat because you have to down a roll in one bite, but it is so worth it. So: eat some sushi! It's good.

And another thing. Wal-Mart sells ping pong balls immediately adjacent to 16oz red plastic cups. Coincidence? I THINK NOT.

I hope everyone has a good weekend and has a lot of fun! Make sure and relax a little bit.