How to respond to the takedown request email?

[Xmader]

Hi, I'm Musescore developer. You need to takedown this repository: https://github.com/Xmader/musescore-downloader and any other your public repositories with same code. Because you illegaly use our private API with licensed music content. All not Public domain content on musescore.com is licensed by major music publishers (Alfred, EMI, Sony, etc.). Distribute licensed music content from Musescore.com for free you violate their rights. Therefore, in pre-trial procedure, I suggest you close the following resources: • https://github.com/Xmader/musescore-downloader (and all your forks and mirrors) • https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/391931-musescore-downloader Otherwise, I will have to transfer information about you to lawyers who will cooperate with github.com and Chinese government to physically find you and stop the illegal use of licensed content.

Thanks, Max Chistyakov


P.S. You can always download Public Domain content for free from musescore.com.

2020-02-08T11:03Z

[Xmader]

Here is how I replied the email.

Hi,

I would like to say something against the takedown request.

Firstly, if I violate the rights of major music publishers, the takedown request should be sent by them instead of you.

Secondly, there is not any private API (if this is wrong, please correct me). The API document is on https://developers.musescore.com/#/file-urls.

Thirdly, Musescore developers are not the authors of the sheet music, nor the copyright owners of the songs. You only offer the space to upload sheet music. It is totally unacceptable that you charge $6.99/mo of Musescore Pro just for downloading them (plus some useless features).

Not every non-public-domain content on musescore.com is owned by major music publishers. There are many small music publishers and independent composers/songwriters; Songs might be licensed under free licenses like Creative Commons. Also, there are many authors who created their own songs and posted the sheet music on musescore.com. Do you pay the authors?

Do you really pay to the copyright owners, or just an excuse to get profit from stealing? I need to see proof that the major music publishers licensed their contents on musescore.com, and proof of paying the licensing fee.

The musescore software is licensed under GPL. Does that mean I could launch an open source, totally free alternative to musescore.com?

Could you explain them to me?

Thanks, Xmader

[psharma04]

This email seems very sketchy to begin with. There are basic grammatical errors throughout the entire email, and DMCA requests are supposed to be sent directly to GitHub, not to a developer.

[TheAceBlock]

... will cooperate with github.com and Chinese government to physically find you and stop the illegal use of licensed content.

I assume they did not even use their head. Only very few people 'have such privilege'. GitHub at most will take this repo. And Chinese government? They will not even bother caring about you. I have heard a few even more serious complaints worse than this before, and it is unlikely that the government would even have response. I can laugh at this for the rest of the year.

[Seven-pence]

支持作者，版权是保护创作者的，不是平台敛财的借口。

[trevortrusty]

支持作者，版权是保护创作者的，不是平台敛财的借口。

How does money protect a creator from independently transcribed sheet music? It's literally notes on a page, how can the creator of the music actually own that?

[RoARene317]

Be aware of direct emails of copyright notice. You need to reconfirm to musescore devs and musescore creators. Because learning from topjohnwu (Creator of github.com/topjohnwu/magisk) someone impersonating one brand.

[Xmader]

Be aware of direct emails of copyright notice. You need to reconfirm to musescore devs and musescore creators. Because learning from topjohnwu (Creator of github.com/topjohnwu/magisk) someone impersonating one brand.

Thanks. I believe he is (or was) an employee of MuseScore, because the emails were sent from m.chistyakov@musescore.com

[makew0rld]

It's possible someone faked the email domain. In any case, I've archived this repository on the Internet Archive here.

[makew0rld]

Yep I had some issues. I will try and archive it later.

[Kaleidosium]

And they took down developers.musescore.com, what a bunch of idiots, but the internet archive is here to stay.

[RoARene317]

Looks like someone impersonate musescore devs eventhough it's opensource.

[lengthwave]

Hi Xmader and crew,

I thought I would reply here, in the spirit of openness and transparency, to see if we may be able to resolve this situation without need for further processes.

Firstly, I work for MuseScore. This might seem a bit confusing since MuseScore is a free open source project, but there are many similar examples of companies sponsoring an open source project (i.e. - Mozilla).

While there are many different models of a company sponsoring a free open source project, even GPL, in this particular case this means that MuseScore BVBA (the legal entity and company):

• Sponsors a full-time engineering and design team dedicated exclusively to the free open source project (10 full time employees)
• Employs an additional team of more than 20 full time employees to manage all other aspects of MuseScore related services (licensing, support, web, etc.)
• Owns the trademark for name MuseScore
• Owns MuseScore.org and MuseScore.com
• Has rights to all content uploaded by users in accordance to the Terms of Use that all users agreed to when registering - https://musescore.com/legal/terms

It would seem that the last point is what participants in this repo have an issue with. Without knowing all of the facts, it would be understandable that there may be confusion. I will do my best to explain.

Before getting into the details of the last point and discussing anything related to music publishers or rights holders, there are a few things that are important to understand.

1. The MuseScore notation software is 100% free and will always be free
2. There is no obligation to publish to Musescore.com as a condition of use of the MuseScore notation software
3. Publishing scores to Musescore.com is entirely voluntary and anyone publishing scores to Musescore.com must agree to the Terms of use in order to do so.
4. Public domain scores and original works may be downloaded from Musescore.com free of charge.

There is another misconception to also clear up. Rights to an arrangement of a copyrighted work do not belong to the arranger, but belong to the rights holder of the original work. It is up to the rights holder to individually determine if they would like to share any revenue resulting from the arrangement, but are under no legal obligation to do so. This is the way the current law works.

As such, an arranger may not monetize their arrangement without explicit permission from and payment of fees (fee for right to arrange, plus royalties) to the rights holder. Again, this is the way the current law works.

The requirement to charge users to be able to download copyrighted arrangements of works and place advertising on the site does not come from MuseScore BVBA, but is a condition the music publishers and rights holders. Without these conditions, copyrighted works could not exist on Musescore.com at all.

Another point of contention expressed in this repo is the fact that arrangers of copyrighted works that publish to Musescore.com are not paid for their effort, even though users must pay a fee to download this content and advertising is displayed.

Let's back up to two key points above -

Rights to an arrangement of a copyrighted work do not belong to the arranger, but belong to the rights holder of the original work. It is up to the rights holder to individually determine if they would like to share any revenue resulting from the arrangement, but are under no legal obligation to do so.

"The arranger may not monetize their arrangement without explicit permission from and payment of fees (fee for right to arrange, plus royalties) to the rights holder."

MuseScore BVBA has made agreements with a number of publishers and rights holders where the company pays for the right to arrange and collects, then distributes royalties. Without the company taking on this responsibility, copyrighted scores could not be published to Musescore.com at all.

Longtime users will note that the conditions for accessing content on Musescore.com have changed over the past year. I think it can be very valuable to provide context for this change.

Not too long ago, MuseScore BVBA was acquired by Ultimate Guitar. At the time it was acquired, none of the content on Musescore.com was properly licensed and the site was on the verge of being shut down by music publishers and rights holders. It was only a matter of time.

Following the acquisition by Ultimate Guitar, deals were struck with the publishers to prevent Musescore.com from being shut down, which would involved changing several aspects of the site, including the way in which copyrighted works were accessed - no more free access.

It would seem that for many users, the convenience of being able to access such a large number of copyrighted scores is well worth the subscription fees, which not only helps to pay the publishers and the team producing Musescore.com, but also subsidizes the team of dedicated full-time contributors to the MuseScore open source project.

But, let's go back to the point of users of the free notation software not being obligated to publish to Musescore.com. This is important to note. Users of the free notation software may also choose to sell their original works through other channels if they desire. No restrictions are placed on this.

Another point brought up in this repo is the use scores as datasets for academic research, more specifically AI & ML. This is something we are actively working on and plan to not only make several sizable datasets available, these will be made available for free for academic institutions. The first step in making these available is a process of validation and normalization before these can be used as "ground truth".

We are currently working with one of the top music technology research institutions to validate and normalize these scores in order to make proper datasets available. We are very committed to supporting academic research in music technology and you will see use becoming more actively involved in this area over time.

This brings me to the final point of misconception about our intentions as a company. We are not the enemy here, in fact, our efforts to generate money are simply used to be able to provide broader access to music creation tools and content, and do so within the context of the realities of the music industry as a whole. This is essential for the effort to be sustainable.

There has never been a single effort to disrupt the music industry by ignoring the realities of rights that has been sustainable. Our objectives are that tools for composers should be free - period, and as much content as possible should be as free as possible, while still respecting the rights holders (without that last point it is not sustainable).

I believe our vision is far more aligned with yours than you may have initially thought. It is my hope that we may find ways to collaborate (very intrigued by the WebAssembly project), as we really do seem to have the same goals.

As we really are very much aligned, hopefully this might be an opportunity to begin a dialogue regarding ways we might instead somehow collaborate.

Best regards,

Daniel Ray Director of Strategy MuseScore BVBA

[Xmader]

Hi Daniel,

I understand the concerns about copyright laws, but all things to do currently as you mentioned, is to pay them. I hope Musescore can raise money by ways other than the paywall (e.g. sell the piano tutorial service, or by donation like Wikipedia), and not losing Musescore.com's key feature. Free downloading was why many users (including me) came to Musescore.

We are not enemies, of course.

I really hope we can collaborate on the WebAssembly project (webmscore), even it can be somehow merged into Musescore software's master. It can greatly save storage and server resources by generating essential files on the client side (but cost time, not much).

Regards, Xmader

[lengthwave]

Hey Xmader,

Firstly, public domain scores and original works may still be downloaded for free. This is something very important for us. We want to make as much as possible, as free as possible, while still respecting the rights holders.

When dealing with copyrighted works, we must deal within the realities of the music industry in relationship to music publishers and rights holders. They set the terms and conditions and we can choose to follow these or not have any copyrighted works available via Musescore.com at all.

We did not choose the paywall model, it is a condition of the rights holders. They are not open to other models as you suggested. Again, if we do not agree to these conditions, copyrighted works cannot be published to Musescore.com at all.

Also, as part of the conditions with rights holders, we are obligated to ensure that this content licensed to us is not redistributed.

This is why I am respectfully asking you to remove this repository and encourage all other forks to similarly be removed, as to not risk the future of the MuseScore project as a whole.

It would be great to discuss webmscore and see how this might be incorporated into the larger picture, as I do see unique value here.

I would be very interested to further our discussion on collaboration once this repository and the MuseScore dataset repository have been closed.

Best regards,

Daniel

[Kaleidosium]

@danieljray I would like to be able to download Public Domain works without an account, I do not get the reasoning behind it.

[lengthwave]

@IamRifki the reasoning is very simple:

Musescore.com is a community and having an account is the most basic form of participation in the community.

Requiring an account to download content also ensures that that we can prevent abuse, such as downloading more than what can be considered reasonable for personal use, such as using automated methods, etc.

This also helps to better support members (free or paid) and better understand the segments and trends of the community as a whole so that we can improve various aspects to make it even better.

Keep in mind that it is very expensive to create, host, manage, and support a community of millions and millions of people.

We provide an incredible amount of tools, services, and content for free and to suggest that all of this must be available without need to register for an account is a bit impolite.

There are more than 30 people working full-time to provide all that MuseScore offers, both paid and free, not to mention the invaluable contributions of the member contributors.

To suggest that taking an extra 15 seconds to create an account is far too much of an inconvenience is out of balance with the millions of dollars and thousands of hours that have been spent for there to be anything to be able to download at all.

Again, MuseScore is a community that is a balance of give and take and invest and share... not simply take.

We welcome your participation in the community.

Daniel

[lengthwave]

@Xmader Waiting for your response on this topic.

Thanks,

Daniel

[processor286]

How else are they going to sell your data if they don't make accounts mandatory even for the free downloads? I wouldn't trust UG with anything with a payment method attached, ever.

edit: and I notice they didn't address the point of taking down the developer site.

[marcan]

The idea that everything on MuseScore is either public domain, original, or covered by major rights management organizations is complete bullshit. I am primarily interested in creating and downloading arrangements of music whose creator broadly allows such usage, and isn't a member of a major rights organization, and I'm sure they aren't getting a cut of any Pro fees. I'm obviously not going to sign up for a Pro membership just to have my money go to big record labels and other organizations I have no interest in, just to download transcriptions and arrangements of independent music.

I also don't know if this has changed at all, but a couple months ago I tried to upload a score and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to even get it to show up as a free download. The entire UX for how the upload settings interact with the download experience is terrible. There was some kind of step about whether you created the song (nothing about whether it's public domain though) but it didn't seem to matter. And no way to change it once the score is uploaded.

So yeah, sorry, but the way this has been pushed through and implemented is complete garbage. Give people a proper license drop-down, with options for things like "I didn't compose this but the composer authorizes this usage" besides PD/CC/etc options, and then you might be able to earn some community goodwill about how you're dealing with licensing.

Until then, we can only be thankful for hacks such as this repo so we don't have to waste our money supporting organizations, including MuseScore itself apparently, who don't support independent music, when trying to download scores from years ago whose uploaders definitely didn't upload them expecting people to have to pay for them all of a sudden. Pulling a bait and switch like that on the community was completely evil, and has gratuitously locked a ton of content behind a paywall that is not warranted for such content.

In fact, some music is licensed under non-commercial terms and by putting it behind a paywall you are suddenly violating its license. So maybe think twice about whether how you went about doing this is even legal!

[Qodify]

Ultimately, I think @danieljray is in the right here. The ability too just download sheet music of well known songs without a fee always seemed to good to me. But like the others I did get used to this incredible feature that one day was yoinked from us.

I would like to talk about the design and communication of the paywall. The feeling of the pay-wall is far uglier than it needs to be.

First, according to the first agreement you had with rights holders, a pop-up on the website could explain in laymans terms for several months why THE feature is now mostly payed.

Second, and i don't know if this is deliberate or not. I notice somewhat of a dark pattern. if I go to River Flows in you certainly not "free". I see the blue Download button with the download icon, I click on it. In which format would you like to have it? Second click. The next pop-up "Download this score or any other from our 1,000,000+ score catalog" and then the next button. [Subscribe & download].

Subscribe? Like on Youtube or Reddit? This would have been better called [Go Pro & Download] but even then we are 2 clicks in and we are not sure how much we need to pay. 3rd click.

completely new url away from the score. "Musescore Pro" reads the headline. "ah, this will be a paywall. hmm No price. it's advertising all these features, but I just want to download the score." I click on the green subscribe button. 4th click.

"I have to make/sign in an account before i can see the price?" I sign in. I get to this page and i know even less what the features are of pro and what I get if I don't go pro. Just use the 2/3 columns basic | Pro and the features in the columns like any other website please.

• use a pop-up explaining musescore.com download feature is drastically changed.
• communicate as fast as possible your are going to need to pay. e.g. on the score page
• make a clear comparison between not logged in/logged in and PRO features, preferably in columns.

[lengthwave]

@Qodify We are working to improve the user experience and to provide more transparency. Part of these practices are dictated by conditions of rights holder, but we are continuously listening to feedback and working to improve.

@Xmader as I have not received any response from you, we will proceed with Github to have all copyrighted materials and any references to them blocked. You are clearly intelligent and ambitious, and it is unfortunate that we could not resolve this and collaborate.

I will make the point once again, anyone can download from Musescore.com anything that is public domain or an original work for free.

The copyright holders of copyrighted works determine the conditions under which their works are available, regardless of being an arrangement or transcription. It is their legal property and their legal right to do so. If we did not able to create an agreement with these copyright holders and comply with their conditions either the works would need to be removed or we would face significant legal and financial consequences.

If you choose to distribute copyrighted works you are personally risking such consequences, not from our company necessarily, but from the rights holders themselves.

[marcan]

@danieljray You keep completely passing over the fact that public domain, original, or requiring an explicit agreement with a rights holder organization are not the only options. Are you deliberately trying to bury the elephant in the room?

I recently found out about an interesting piece of software. You may have heard of it, it's called MuseScore. It's pretty neat! What's more interesting, though, is that it is this thing called "free software". What that means is that -get this- its license, called the General Public License, allows anyone to use it, share it, modify it, and distribute it for free! No need to pay money! Even if you didn't make it, you can share it! It's not public domain though, you have to follow a few rules if you want to do that, but you don't need to negotiate an agreement with anyone. Isn't that amazing?

Ahem.

So, how about adding a bunch of Creative Commons options to scores on MuseScore.com, as well as some kind of general catch-all "Other/I have permission to share this", so that us who work with and support openly licensed culture can make use of the service without throwing money at rights holders who have no stake nor claim to the works involved? Right now, MuseScore is explicitly refusing to support openly licensed works, instead locking everything that isn't CC0 or purely original behind a paywall. And, on top of that, you are threatening with legal action the only people helping make this content available without a paywall. Is this the image you want MuseScore to give, of an organization that refuses to acknowledge the existence of free culture licenses at all? Do you realize how ironic this is from an organization who develops GPLv2-licensed software?

[lengthwave]

@marcan the distribution of MuseScore software (including availability and use of source code) and distribution of scores are two very separate activities.

Regarding the MuseScore software, this is fully within our control and we are not only 100% committed to open source, but also free software.

We are also very committed to making public domain content freely available and even engage a team to transcribe public domain content that is made freely available on Musescore.com.

When it comes to copyrighted works, the way this is handled is not only not within our control, it also influences the licensing structures and mechanisms we are able to provide on the site as a whole. We understand very deeply the various forms of CC licensing beyond simply CC-0, but are unable to provide such variants on a site that also distributes copyrighted works. These conditions are dictated by rights holders of copyrighted works.

So, our choice is to have zero copyrighted works on the site and employ a wider range of CC licenses or to have also make copyrighted works available and be limited to only the licensing options for ALL works, not just copyrighted works, that are agreed to by the copyright holders.

Regarding legal action, I am not making any threats, I only stated the potential risks involved in distributing a significant number of copyrighted works.

Backing up to the use case you are referring to - the ability to freely download, remix, repost public domain and non-copyrighted works at zero cost. This currently exists on Musescore.com.

The only thing you must pay for is the ability to do the same with copyrighted works. That's it.

There is no option that exists in reality to freely download, remix, or repost copyrighted works without legal or financial risk due to enforcement actions by the rights holders of copyrighted works.

[marcan]

When it comes to copyrighted works, the way this is handled is not only not within our control, it also influences the licensing structures and mechanisms we are able to provide on the site as a whole. We understand very deeply the various forms of CC licensing beyond simply CC-0, but are unable to provide such variants on a site that also distributes copyrighted works. These conditions are dictated by rights holders of copyrighted works.

What? The music rights industry is now banning open licensing from existing alongside their own stuff? I'm sorry, I don't buy that. If that is really true, that is absolutely evil and you are doing the community a disservice by not fighting against it. But I highly doubt it's true, because it doesn't make sense, and because this is the first time I've heard of this; for example, YouTube has no problem offering CC-BY alongside all rights reserved, and we all know they are deeply involved with rights holders.

Again, I am interested in scores licensed under licenses that are not "public domain" but whose original composer allows derivative works; just in the case of one specific composer I am interested in, a quick search suggests there are 500+ such scores on MuseScore. And yet I cannot download any of them without a Pro subscription, even though that composer is not a member of any rights organizations, and even though this status quo might actually be violating his guidelines, because he only allows for-profit sale of derivative works under certain conditions which, in my personal opinion, MuseScore.com does not fulfill. So by locking down those behind a Pro subscription, you are quite likely violating his licensing conditions, while if you allowed them to be downloaded for free you would be in the clear.

Again, "copyrighted" does not mean "you need to pay for it". MuseScore, the software, is copyrighted. That doesn't mean you need to pay for it. You keep denying the existence of permissive and copyleft licenses (which are copyright licenses fundamentally) and this is unconscionable coming from a project that started as copylefted software.

[dalva24]

So I've been watching this issue for some months now, and I think I'm just going to share my opinions on it.

First of all, I believe it is certainly a shame something that used to be provided for free is now locked behind a paywall. I have read statements from danieljray, and can agree to the reasonings that the change from free to paywall is in large part due to pressures from copyright holders asking for their share of the cake. As much as I see it to be in a direct opposition against the principles of free and open source software, it certainly makes sense because they do own the rights to some of the pieces after all.

HOWEVER,

As many others, even the owner of this repository, have stated many times before, I too find it hard to agree to the fact that even original compositions also falls into the tyrrany of a paywall.

In fact, I believe unless MuseScore's primary goal is to profit as much as possible from it all, this is not the only way to satisfy both copyright holders AND previously-happy-now-angry MuseScore users.

For example, look at how Youtube operates. Taking inspiration from it, MuseScore can for example let user submitted compositions go free, and ONLY lock it behind paywall WHEN there is a copyright claim from those right holders. Sure this is not without problems of its own, such as false claimings and what not, but it is still a legally acceptable solution to keep right holders at bay, AND more morally acceptable to users.

Of course, I am no lawyer myself, so I can be in the wrong. That being said, everything I written is posted in good faith upon the principles of Free and Open Source Software.

I guess for now, our only hope is for the community to rise up and develop a fully free and open composition repository for MuseScore Software. I can at least hope MuseScore would accept such pull request if one day such repository were to be developed by the community, no?

[lengthwave]

@marcan YouTube is about recorded audio, while Musescore.com is about printed sheet music.

The licensing of rights for these very different scenarios are not at all similar.

Consider Google's own licensing restrictions with Google Books vs. YouTube.

To access full content with Google Books (and in some cases any part of a particular work), you must pay to access.

This is very different from master recording rights or performance rights that YouTube is subject to.

The landscape of various rights for different forms of copyrighted works and different media is very complex. There is no one-size-fits all approach for all forms of copyrighted works.

[lengthwave]

As many others, even the owner of this repository, have stated many times before, I too find it hard to agree to the fact that even original compositions also falls into the tyrrany of a paywall.

It those cases the composer that uploaded incorrectly attributed the work. We are working on ways to resolve any inaccurate attributions.

In fact, I believe unless MuseScore's primary goal is to profit as much as possible from it all, this is not the only way to satisfy both copyright holders AND previously-happy-now-angry MuseScore users.

If MuseScore was not acquired and continued down the current path, it would have been already shut down by now. This is what many people do not understand. MuseScore was going to be shut down if it was not acquired and a plan put in place with rights holders.

I guess for now, our only hope is for the community to rise up and develop a fully free and open composition repository for MuseScore Software. I can at least hope MuseScore would accept such pull request if one day such repository were to be developed by the community, no?

Any site or system of distribution that includes copyrighted works and is done so under agreement with rights holders and according to their conditions will be shut down. This is simply reality.

We are genuinely committed to open source and do want to make as much as possible as free as possible. The fact that I am sitting here and writing in these discussions at all should be evidence of our commitment to open source and engagement vs. simply passing the issue on to lawyers to deal with.

We do care about open source and we do believe in the idea of freedom of choice for creators and rights holders... but that goes both ways, when the rights holder doesn't wish to allow their work to be distributed for free.

[marcan]

@marcan YouTube is about recorded audio, while Musescore.com is about printed sheet music.

The licensing of rights for these very different scenarios are not at all similar.

That may be so, but you are claiming that printed music rights holders refuse to allow Creative Commons content to coexist on the same platform as their own copyrighted works, which is beyond insane.

If this is seriously the case, and your lawyers can't work this out, then the only thing reasonable thing for you to do to not leave the community stranded is simple: create a new instance of the musescore.com platform (perhaps under the musescore.org umbrella), move the scores back there, and only leave copyrighted content identified as owned by draconian rights holders on musescore.com, where it won't hurt the rest of the community. musescore.com already has some degree of cross referencing scores to songs, so it should not be a complex job to take a list of songs owned by such rights holders and make a first pass approximate attempt at this, and let them manually claim anything that slips through.

[Kaleidosium]

@marcan You might be interested in @Xmader's Librescore Project. https://github.com/LibreScore/LibreScore

[lengthwave]

If this is seriously the case, and your lawyers can't work this out, then the only thing reasonable thing for you to do to not leave the community stranded is simple: create a new instance of the musescore.com platform (perhaps under the musescore.org umbrella), move the scores back there, and only leave copyrighted content identified as owned by draconian rights holders on musescore.com, where it won't hurt the rest of the community. musescore.com already has some degree of cross referencing scores to songs, so it should not be a complex job to take a list of songs owned by such rights holders and make a first pass approximate attempt at this, and let them manually claim anything that slips through.

There are more than 12 million members of the community and it is growing at a rate of thousands per day.

The number of people complaining about the particular issue of not having a more flexibility with variants of CC licenses is less than 50. This issue is not quite as large of an issue as you perceive it to be.

We recently sent a survey to a sizable segment of Musescore.com users and received around 18,000 responses. Not one single response mentioned this particular issue.

Anyway, I did engage here to clarify things and listened to concerns. I gave ample time for response, but now must proceed with requesting takedown from Github. We will be actively enforcing any means of circumventing Musescore.com authentication and content access, as well as distribution of any materials obtained through unauthorized access.

We are legally obligated to enforce this based on agreements with rights holders.

I will not be commenting further on this topic.

[Xmader]

We do care about open source

Please and must open source your mobile app first.

[SushiInYourFace]

@danieljray

I have a couple of questions. First, when you say that you are not the "bad guys" here, does that mean that what's at fault right now is Ultimate Guitar, broken copyright laws, or both? Secondly, I'm still wondering about the email that started this whole thing. As someone else pointed out, it did seem a bit fishy and poorly written. Did this email actually come from Musescore?

[Xoncia]

what has happened in this legal processes? @Xmader Have they sent a notice?

[Xmader]

what has happened in this legal processes? @Xmader Have they sent a notice?

I think they won't.

---

@danieljray

You stated that this script might violate the copyright holders’ rights. However, the point is, how does this script violate your (MuseScore’s) copyright specifically?

(MuseScore does not own any of score uploaded to musescore.com)

Musescore does not claim any ownership rights in User Generated Content that you transmit, submit, display or publish ("post") on, through or in connection with the Service.

Remember, you are not those copyright holders. You can’t send any takedown notice on behalf of them.

DMCA Notices In a Nutshell If someone else is using your copyrighted content in an unauthorized manner on GitHub, you can send us a DMCA takedown notice to request that the infringing content be changed or removed. On the other hand, counter notices can be used to correct mistakes. Maybe the person sending the takedown notice does not hold the copyright or did not realize that you have a license or made some other mistake in their takedown notice. ... the DMCA counter notice allows you to let us know and ask that we put the content back up.

[Xoncia]

I think @danieljray was trying to scare you into taking down the repo. After accepting failure he stopped commenting

[Xmader]

I think @danieljray was trying to scare you into taking down the repo. After accepting failure he stopped commenting

I think the same. Now MuseScore came to scare Greasy Fork. see https://github.com/Xmader/musescore-downloader/issues/42#issue-730028032

[humphreygaming]

If it is real, I would just take this github down and create another one under a different alias, or just ignore all together. The email does seem pretty sketchy.

[Cr-nch]

Uhh... they started blocking the plug-in...

[Cr-nch]

I just realised, even if musescore takes down this repo, it won’t stop me from taking hours of my time to manually copy the music from my browser into some other program.

[marcan]

Yes, the whole DRM nonsense with user-contributed sheet music is particularly absurd, because the publishers obviously have no copyright claim to the engraving, and the music is right there. The essence of the MuseScore files is the engraving and transcription work; as far as the copyright story on the original composition, there is no tangible difference between allowing download in MuseScore format, in other formats, or just showing it online and taking screenshots.

So letting people see the music in its entirety, but not download it in mscz format, is like MuseScore taking credit for users' contributions. If this were about the original compositions, then they would have to limit access to all formats including web preview.

[processor286]

If I compose and publish some music, and list it as a copyrighted work on musescore, presumably they'll send me some royalties, right? I mean, they wouldn't just allow their subscribers to take my work for free.

[Jerry790790]

after all we just want to download stuff for free

[badcodehash]

this part right here is by marcan (i accidentally thought the author of the paragraph is x lol sorry)

If this is seriously the case, and your lawyers can't work this out, then the only thing reasonable thing for you to do to not leave the community stranded is simple: create a new instance of the musescore.com platform (perhaps under the musescore.org umbrella), move the scores back there, and only leave copyrighted content identified as owned by draconian rights holders on musescore.com, where it won't hurt the rest of the community. musescore.com already has some degree of cross referencing scores to songs, so it should not be a complex job to take a list of songs owned by such rights holders and make a first pass approximate attempt at this, and let them manually claim anything that slips through.

This is actually a really good, viable and competent solution. Listen to the dev.

And now ill answer to everything that our dear friend daniel said as his final notice.

There are more than 12 million members of the community and it is growing at a rate of thousands per day.

I mean sure I guess. However have you ever considered that people who create accounts might just make an account and never touch it ever again?

The number of people complaining about the particular issue of not having a more flexibility with variants of CC licenses is less than 50. This issue is not quite as large of an issue as you perceive it to be.

It is an issue. The active userbase percieves it to be. And especially if someone went out of their way to make a bypass.

We recently sent a survey to a sizable segment of Musescore.com users and received around 18,000 responses. Not one single response mentioned this particular issue.

Have you tried addressing the issue directly? Picture a biology class. If you ask something about isopods, pretty sure no one is going to start talking about cats. Also didnt you have a userbase of around like.... 12 million? If we do the math, it seems like not EVEN 1% OF YOUR USERS ANSWERED THE THING.

Anyway, I did engage here to clarify things and listened to concerns. I gave ample time for response, but now must proceed with requesting takedown from Github. We will be actively enforcing any means of circumventing Musescore.com authentication and content access, as well as distribution of any materials obtained through unauthorized access.

I have an account yet I can't download anything at all, even public domain stuff. Pretty sure that i'm not the only person who has this issue. You DONT must proceed. To me it just seems that yall are trying to squeeze out some money out of your users for whatever reason. I am competent with computers, and I KNOW that i'm not doing anything wrong while using ur website.

We are legally obligated to enforce this based on agreements with rights holders.

Yes you are. But you are complying the wrong way, that is, forgetting common sense.

I will not be commenting further on this topic.

Why? Are you afraid to talk with a person who is saying meaningful and valid stuff? Genuinely critisizing what yall guys do? Seems wrong.

[EddiesTech]

@danieljray I don't know if you still work at Musescore or not, but I want to ask you something. In the UK at least, we have a set of exemptions for copyright legislation, as outlined here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/exceptions-to-copyright One of them is 'Teaching'. Most notably this line: 'performing, playing or showing copyright works in a school, university or other educational establishment for educational purposes.' And here (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/554033/Copyright_Notice_Printed_Music.pdf), most notably this line 'Can I copy printed music without asking permission? [...] there are exceptions in copyright legislation which allow for copying of printed music in certain circumstances without permission. These include copyright exceptions for research and private study; criticism, review and quotation; parody, caricature and pastiche; and education'. From my understanding, as a student, if I want to use the copyrighted material in an educational setting, I should be allowed to do so. How come Musescore.com doesn't have an option to download the music for education when surely it can be classed as a 'copy' since you gave me the full sheet music anyway? Or does the license you have with the nameless 'rights holders' not allow this?

[CaptainChicky]

Honestly, this is one of the most annoying things about MuseScore rn. Smh. Good work Xmader!

[mynhs]

Thank you very much, @Xmader Good work!

[joenot443]

Thank you for your work @Xmader - great stuff. It brings me true joy to see you refusing to back down from @danieljray's bullying.

[Be-ing]

Let this story be a lesson to everyone interested in building media technology: do not build anything which requires the approval of media distribution industries. You will be responsible for enforcing their whims against the interests of your users. Are you a cop, or do you want to build cool technology?

[psharma04]

I've uploaded a copy of commit 6d93907df0360243a75d061b8998272b4e4aa00b to IPFS, you can find it on any IPFS gateway (Cloudflare, Infura, IPFS.IO, Pinata, Astanax, DWEB, BestPractice.SE). If you have a computer/server running IPFS, please pin bafybeie2mnfffnbr46vwo5kfnokwc32v32drqjtys3u7zwc5hmqroiopii by running ipfs pin add -r bafybeie2mnfffnbr46vwo5kfnokwc32v32drqjtys3u7zwc5hmqroiopii

[domsson]

I haven't read every single comment, but I'd like to point something out about that original email:

Otherwise, I will have to transfer information about you to lawyers who will cooperate with github.com and Chinese government to physically find you and stop the illegal use of licensed content.

"to physically find you"

Excuse me? Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but this seems like a threat to me?