IMSLP's goal is to make the world's public domain and freely-licensed music available to everyone.
We welcome works that are naturally in the public domain, as well as new editions, arrangements and compositions released for use in line with our licensing policy (explained on this page).
This page is mainly about licensing rules for original creations (editions, recordings, arrangements, compositions) made by IMSLP users. For information on public domain files, see Copyright Made Simple and Public domain.
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Copyright law protects creative works by default in virtually every country around the world. Normally, all rights are reserved to the creator of a work at the time of its creation. The only way that a work can be shared on IMSLP is if the original copyrights have expired or if the copyright holder grants permission. Copyright is a complex subject, and what constitutes a copyrightable creation is not the same in every country; copyright law is complicated and explainers of various aspects can be found on other pages. We are still working on making our explainers more comprehensive and updating them for the latest changes. For some information, see Copyright Made Simple and Public domain.
In any case, submissions can include public domain content, copyrighted content or both. For example:
Works that are in the public domain can be used by anyone for any purpose. They can be performed and copied freely and used as the basis for new works (such as your arrangement) with no restrictions. These new works can be released under a free license, but they are proprietary by default — that is, copyright law restricts their use to only that specifically authorized by the copyright holder; if the copyright holder releases the work under a free license, then this grants permission to anyone to use the copyrighted work according to the terms of the license.
Note that licenses are not "infectious." They can only protect original copyrighted material controlled by the person granting permission. For example, in the United Kingdom, a new "typographical arrangement" is protected by copyright for a term of 25 years. So if you open a scorewriting/engraving program and copy in a piece of music that is in the public domain (such as a composition by Mozart), you would gain a 25-year copyright on your "typographical arrangement" in the UK, and your permission would be needed for users in the UK to copy your score. However, your copyright would not extend to the creative work of Mozart contained within your score, and anyone who owned a copy of your score could perform from it without needing your permission (since the performance would be of Mozart's work, not yours). What elements are actually protectable within editions may vary from country to country, but the copyright status of an edition cannot affect the public domain status of the underlying work itself. For this reason, a performance made from a copyrightable edition of a public domain work is not subject to the copyright of the edition as long as the performance is of the public domain work.
While IMSLP contains both public domain and licensed content, public domain works are the bedrock of our collection. We continue to accept public domain works according to the relevant copyright laws, as we always have. For licensed works, we are now aligning ourselves with the definitions of free content used by other major repositories (such as Wikimedia Commons) and the Definition of Free Cultural Works. Not all content on IMSLP meets this definition, but we are making some changes in order to make sure that works on IMSLP align more with these other sites. This will enable, to give one example, the incorporation of more licensed content on IMSLP into Wikipedia articles.
Note that all licenses and public domain dedications are considered irrevocable. As a matter of site policy, files will not be removed once submitted, so long as the original submission was done in line with the permission of relevant copyright holders. IMSLP will respect a change from a more restrictive license (such as CC BY-SA) to a more liberal one (such as CC BY or CC Zero), but restrictions may not be added after an upload has been made. Note also that any file created by an IMSLP user and uploaded as "Public Domain" is considered dedicated to the public domain by the user.
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CC Zero
(Public Domain Dedication)
No restrictions |
CC BY
(Attribution)
Must include attribution
|
CC BY-SA
(Attribution-Share Alike)
Must include attribution
and Must share alike (always stays free to share and use) |
This option releases your work into the public domain. Users can use it for any purpose, just like any public domain work.
This option allows users to share and perform your copyrighted work and make derivative works (e.g., recordings of a new composition or arrangement),
so long as
This option allows users to share and perform your copyrighted work and make derivative works (e.g., recordings of a new composition or arrangement),
so long as
AND
This is a copyleft license: it requires that your copyrighted work only be used as the basis for other freely-shareable content. While a fee may be charged (though this is uncommon in practice) for a physical copy of the work or a derivative work, the copies must not be restricted and must be marked as explicitly shareable, including for free, under CC BY-SA.
As a special exception, IMSLP is also able to host works under the "Performance-Restricted" licenses. These licenses allow redistribution of the sheet music, but prohibit public performance without permission. These licenses can only be used for original compositions. Furthermore, they can only be used by composers who are verified members of a performing rights organization (PRO) — such as ASCAP or BMI in the US, SOCAN in Canada and so on.
PR-licensed files are not free for any purpose, and should considered separate from the main collection and goals of IMSLP. Since many groups (schools, orchestras, etc.) have blanket licenses to use works whose performance rights are administered by PROs, this service is meant to facilitate composers who belong to those PROs in making the sheet music available digitally directly to these end-users. Any composer who wishes to do this now MUST send proof of membership in a PRO over email to dbmiller@imslp.org in order for these submissions to be accepted.
The main rule changes are as follows:
Note that these policies do not apply to items submitted before these changes were announced.
When a work is released under a "No Derivatives" license, nobody except the copyright holder can modify it or use it to creative a derivative work (such as a recording) without permission. As a result, these files are essentially unusable for most purposes. Users cannot produce a recording of new works licensed under these terms and submit to IMSLP (although this has happened — this user confusion is a reason why we are disallowing this license). IMSLP's goal is to be a library of free content, but it takes time and resources for us to accept new contributions. We want files to be free for users to actually use. Furthermore, we don't want there to be confusion for users on a website whose main goal is to spread public-domain works. Therefore, files released under a CC-ND license will no longer be allowed.
As a special and rare exception, the administrators may in some cases accept certain editions of public domain works released under a "No Derivatives" license on another site. However, this must not be used by IMSLP users in order to get around this restriction and only may be applied at the discretion of administrators.
Furthermore, scans of public domain editions and transfers of public domain recordings, which are not in fact subject to new copyrights just by being transferred to digital form, may be accepted, even if their source claims that they are CC-ND; however, these should be submitted as "Public domain" due to the license for the actual content being invalid to begin with.
The Wikimedia Foundation does not accept CC-NC files on their projects, and the Definition of Free Cultural Works considers works released under the CC-NC licenses to be non-free. There are significant issues with the ambiguity of the CC-NC licenses, as acknowledged by Creative Commons.
For submitters who want to keep their work free, we recommend the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license instead. This license is less ambiguous and nearly universally accepted on free-content sites. The basic difference between the licenses is this: the CC-BY-SA license allows someone else to sell a copy of your work, however, any copy must be marked as freely shareable under the CC-BY-SA license. In other words, the work always remains marked as shareable and anyone who sells cannot restrict other people from making copies for free. In practical terms, CC-BY-SA works are not generally sold for profit, because doing so usually entails the seller using copyright to maintain exclusivity on the document. However, for example, selling physical copies of a work for use in schools (especially in areas with poor internet access) might be disallowed under the NC licenses, but is explicitly allowed under CC-BY-SA. The CC-BY-SA license requires that the copyrighted work remain free to be copied, including for free, even if a copy is sold.
Furthermore, IMSLP remains dedicated to serving copies of all Creative Commons-licensed files to anyone, for free. Even if a copy is sold (with a notice that it can be freely copied further), users should always be able to download a copy for free from IMSLP.
Accordingly, the CC-NC licenses are now considered deprecated on IMSLP, and will show up only as a special item on the license selector. CC-NC files can be imported from external sources, but they are strongly discouraged for new submissions made by IMSLP users.
In order to deal with some of the minutiae of copyright policy on IMSLP, we are also making some minor changes which apply to user-created content.
