A Canadian archives of public domain sheet music, put together by volunteers, has been taken down by the owner of the site.  A German music company sent a “cease and desist” letter to the site’s owner, asking that protections be put in place to block access to some pieces that are still under copyright in some countries.  (Works in  Europe are protected for seventy years after the death of the composer and for fifty years in Canada.)  The site owner was unable to put such a system in place and has shut it down, offering up the domain name and materials to an organization that might be able to keep it running.

The incident is a good example that demonstrates how varying copyright laws need to be taken into account when posting public domain material online for projects.

article at The Register

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The Creative Commons add-in for MS Office allows you to embed a CC license of your choosing in your Word document, Excel Spreadsheet or your Powerpoint show. A big advantage of doing this is to explicitly specify how you would like others to use your work. For example, a “Share Alike” license specifies that others may use your work as long as it for non-commercial purposes, you are given credit and anything they make with it has to carry the same license. You can get the add-in or read more about Creative Commons.

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Wendy Seltzer, a scholar who has been active in debates on copyright issues, will give two talks tomorrow. The University Computer Policy and Law program at Cornell University will stream both the 2:55 pm and 7:30 pm talks live. Seltzer is a visiting assistant professor at Northeastern University School of Law, teaching Intellectual Property, Internet Law, and Antitrust, and a fellow with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.

Protecting the University from Copyright Bullies – 2:55 pm, 9/27/07
How can the university foster intellectual exploration and creativity, protect students’ privacy, and educate responsible citizens of the networked world? Is it possible to support balanced copyright law and enforcement, without responding to every entertainment company’s demands for internet filtering and “pre-litigation notices”?

Righting the Copyright Balance – 7:30 pm, 9/27/07
Can the music go on by offering fans better ways to get music, while guaranteeing payment for its creators? Where have copyright law and its enforcers gone wrong, and what can students, music fans, and co-creators do to put the law back on track?

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SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, invites faculty to help students showcase their views on the value of openly sharing information. Make a two-minute video, post it on the Internet with a Creative Commons license and enter the contest to win $1,000. The Internet gives us ways to discover, collaborate and create in unprecedented ways, the SPARC invitation states, and the free exchange of information is a tool for addressing world problems. Applications for the contest are due Dec. 2, 2007.

SPARC is an alliance supported and funded by hundreds of academic libraries and research institutions.

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