7 ms·

That does sound awful. Did they allow a grace period for people to download/migrate their stuff off the platform?

triclops200 6y ago
They did. OP also neglected to mention that this was forced by the music industry threatening to sue them into oblivion if they didn't put it behind a pay wall.
- jedimastert 6y ago
  Can you expand on this, or point to an article? I don't follow Musescore but I do follow music copyright stuff (which I assume this was about.
  - triclops200 6y ago
    Yeah. Lots of things that were uploaded to this cloud service were transcriptions or complete rips of sheet music of in-copyright works. Sheet music is also copyrighted and when the music industry found out about the service, it got strong armed.
    - zozbot234 6y ago
      There's a lot of sheet music that's absolutely in the public domain, though. Most of what's on IMSLP falls under that. (IMSLP only provides raw scans however. There is an Open Scores project that's supposed to work on making machine-readable versions of those in Musescore, but I don't know if their output is freely accessible outside their cloud platform.)
    - jbay808 6y ago
      If you listen to a MIDI video game track and use your ear to write a violin-and-piano arrangement, do you own the copyright to your arrangement, or does the original composer?
      - hnlmorg 6y ago
        The original composer still owns the copyright for the composition but you own the copyright for the performance. Just like if you sang someone else's song.
        jbay808 6y ago
        Much like cleanroom-written code, these are often made without ever looking at the official sheet music, just hearing some synth midi and figuring out a neat way to replicate the general idea using traditional instruments. But yes, apparently it would be violating US copyright law to rearrange music this way. http://ostrowesq.com/no-you-dont-own-your-arrangement-of-that-hit-song/ http://ostrowesq.com/no-you-dont-own-your-arrangement-of-tha...
- zozbot234 6y ago
  Musescore did have separate listings for PD or CC-licensed compositions, vs. "no copyright is intended, wink wink" ones. They could have allowed access to the ones that were properly licensed.
  - triclops200 6y ago
    Except that people would often select the wrong license as it's a human controlled process.
- save_ferris 6y ago
  There's no way that were completely unaware of this possibility when they started the service. They did this intentionally to get as big as they possibly could before the music industry came after them, leaving their users high and dry in the process. You can't start a music platform without having some sort of peripheral awareness of how litigious that industry is. They could've tried to build it out more responsibly early on and chose not to.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    >There's no way that were completely unaware of this possibility when they started the service. Of course there is. You overestimate small companies, which might not even have a permanent lawyer on board...

They did. OP also neglected to mention that this was forced by the music industry threatening to sue them into oblivion if they didn't put it behind a pay wall.

jedimastert 6y ago
Can you expand on this, or point to an article? I don't follow Musescore but I do follow music copyright stuff (which I assume this was about.
- triclops200 6y ago
  Yeah. Lots of things that were uploaded to this cloud service were transcriptions or complete rips of sheet music of in-copyright works. Sheet music is also copyrighted and when the music industry found out about the service, it got strong armed.
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    There's a lot of sheet music that's absolutely in the public domain, though. Most of what's on IMSLP falls under that. (IMSLP only provides raw scans however. There is an Open Scores project that's supposed to work on making machine-readable versions of those in Musescore, but I don't know if their output is freely accessible outside their cloud platform.)
  - jbay808 6y ago
    If you listen to a MIDI video game track and use your ear to write a violin-and-piano arrangement, do you own the copyright to your arrangement, or does the original composer?
    - hnlmorg 6y ago
      The original composer still owns the copyright for the composition but you own the copyright for the performance. Just like if you sang someone else's song.
      - jbay808 6y ago
        Much like cleanroom-written code, these are often made without ever looking at the official sheet music, just hearing some synth midi and figuring out a neat way to replicate the general idea using traditional instruments. But yes, apparently it would be violating US copyright law to rearrange music this way. http://ostrowesq.com/no-you-dont-own-your-arrangement-of-that-hit-song/ http://ostrowesq.com/no-you-dont-own-your-arrangement-of-tha...
zozbot234 6y ago
Musescore did have separate listings for PD or CC-licensed compositions, vs. "no copyright is intended, wink wink" ones. They could have allowed access to the ones that were properly licensed.
- triclops200 6y ago
  Except that people would often select the wrong license as it's a human controlled process.
save_ferris 6y ago
There's no way that were completely unaware of this possibility when they started the service. They did this intentionally to get as big as they possibly could before the music industry came after them, leaving their users high and dry in the process. You can't start a music platform without having some sort of peripheral awareness of how litigious that industry is. They could've tried to build it out more responsibly early on and chose not to.
- coldtea 6y ago
  >There's no way that were completely unaware of this possibility when they started the service. Of course there is. You overestimate small companies, which might not even have a permanent lawyer on board...