IMSLP:Temporary Forum

Welcome to the Temporary Forum for the IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library. This is a temporary replacement for our phpBB forums, which we hope will be back online soon.

• Please use this forum only for questions and issues directly related to IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library (copyright, problems with upload or PDF creation, etc.). General music discussion will be available again once the phpBB forums are back up.
• Please use the Wishlist for score requests.

To reply to an existing topic, please use the "edit" link next to the topic title (you must be logged in for this). To start a new topic, click the link below:

Curious - what's up with the usual forums?

didn't pay the bill? --Homerdundas 17:17, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Apparently it's not entirely clear yet (see Feldmahler's talk page, towards the bottom). Nothing to do with the bill though. --Leonard Vertighel 19:08, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

[TB] files

Am I missing something obvious, or is it impossible to do a search for files which are on technical block [TB] - I would like to have a listing of these one way or another. --Homerdundas 17:19, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't know about the ability to search for such files, but one thing I've been doing lately is to add links to Sheet Music Plus and Amazon so that one can at least purchase a score. Carolus 20:29, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

The idea is to go searching for them at the Library of Congress - if I can't find em to start with...  :-(

--Homerdundas 21:29, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

You could try like this. --Leonard Vertighel 21:46, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Genius! >:-o
--Homerdundas 22:20, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Of course, the tag finder system has this built in...wanna become a CR just for this? ;)-- Snailey _{Talk to Me Email me} 02:01, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

13 May 2010 forums outage

The forums seem to have been unavailable since the early hours of 13 May 2010 (UTC) or possibly earlier. At this stage I'm not aware (possibly speaking for admins who are not physically located anywhere near the servers!) how long the outage is likely to last. We've had an offer of the use of an emergency bulletin board located at imslp.eu by Choralia if there is a need to raise a discussion urgently – the emergency forum does not have your usual IMSLPforums login details, so you will have to register to post there. Philip Legge _{@ © talk} 05:43, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Whomever is responsible for hosting these forums is doing a crap job. This is a far too often occurrence and I hope they can be moved elsewhere. Daphnis 06:21, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

I've already replied to Choralia's note on my talk page asking if we could move the forums permanently to the IMSLP.EU server. Just in defence of the current host: his server is already taking the lion's share of IMSLP's bandwidth (it was ~250GB/day a year ago, must be ~400GB/day now), so we should thank him for that. Plus, the forum problem is probably a subtle software problem; I think he tried to fix it before but did not succeed. Considering that he has already done much for IMSLP I do not want to make him spend more time.

It may also be slightly ironic that the forums disappear the day I actually want to use them. My summer coding period has come, so I would like suggestions for IMSLP improvements. We already have a full course ready, the two main features being a full-scale launch of the CategoryWalker system and the revamping of IMSLP to accept audio files/performances (don't worry about legal ramifications; there will be a new licensing system that should address this; copyright reviewers will not be additionally burdened). While these are large enough changes, I would still like feedback on other possible features, including bug fixes. Of course, feel free to comment on the two main features that will be rolled out (I haven't started programming them, so if you have ideas for them please tell me). --Feldmahler 14:01, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

As discussed on Feldmahler's talk page, we've agreed to permanently move the forums to a new server, that is not the same where the "Emergency BB" was temporarily located. The new server is up and running, although propagation of the new IP address throughout the world would take some hours. Depending on the IP address propagation progress, users may still land on the temporary server for a while. --Choralia 17:45, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure what happened, but if it was at all related to phpBB, I'd strongly suggest moving to something better; there are a number of problems with phpBB in general and much better solutions exist. Just my two cents. :) --Andrewski 15:51, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I operate the CPDL forums using phpBB since October 2008. Uptime so far is 99.89%, and 99.93% since the beginning of 2010. As I'm in charge of operations and my objective is 99.5%, I'm pretty happy with these availability figures. Maybe other BBs have better functions, but from the availability viewpoint phpBB seems fine. --Choralia 17:19, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm still not getting the new server. What do I need to do differently (tried imslpforums.org, imslp.eu, etc.)-- Snailey (_@/) _{Talk to Me Email me} 17:26, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

The new server is up and running at http://imslp.eu, but Feldmahler is trying to get a final dump from the admin of the old server so that the new server starts at the precise point where the old server stopped, and no BB messages are lost. --Choralia 18:32, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I've received that latest available dump, apparently dated May 8. It is now loaded at http://imslp.eu, and users should be able to login using their normal credentials. Some BB configuration activities are still required, anyway it should basically work now. --Choralia 15:47, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

It does, however it is painfully slow to the point of making it useless. Daphnis 15:52, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

At the moment, the measured response time is well below half a second. Maybe you had to feed your cache from scratch, or you logged-in at the very time I was performing some database maintenance. Please try again. --Choralia 16:27, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

I have emptied cache and logged out, but I'm still seeing very erratic response times even still. Is there a backup in process? Daphnis 16:37, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Please do not empty the cache, otherwise you everytime start re-creating it from scratch, and this takes more time to get pages. I've just run a backup to test the automatic backup script, but it only took 3 seconds to run, so I don't think this is the reason of what you observe. Response time is constantly a fraction of a second, as measured by a third-party provider. When I started operating WIMA at the same server farm (it's located in Texas), we found a very strange routing problem from Northern Europe to Texas, that was then reported to European ISPs, and solved by them. Where are you located? I would suggest to carry out a connectivity test using http://www.speedtest.net and selecting Austin, TX as a test location. --Choralia 16:51, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't want to mention where I'm from, but my ping to Austin is >100ms with up/down speeds over 5Mbit. It appears the latency is now a bit lower, so I'll try a bit later on. Daphnis 17:00, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

I've found a possible reason looking into the error logs: apparently the old BB included some additional files (such as smileys and things like that), which are not present in the new BB as it has been built from scratch (we only loaded the existing database, the rest of the BB is just a clean install). Pages invoking missing files may take longer to load. --Choralia 17:11, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

So you're saying there's no way to recover the posts that were made from May 9 to 13? KGill _{talk email} 21:59, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Never mind, I see you already answered on the forum, sorry. KGill _{talk email} 00:11, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Recordings

If the bandwidth has increased to ~400GB/day, is it really astute to add recordings as another things for IMSLP to do, or are they actually going to be hosted off-site in some way?

Presumably legalities would be covered by safe harbour provisions for DCMA takedowns; but aren't these going to end up being time-consuming for someone at IMSLP to comply with?

Regards, Philip Legge _{@ © talk} 14:48, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

I do not envision the recordings to be that much larger than the scores actually; with current compression technologies the size difference should not be major. Bandwidth is getting cheaper and cheaper with the explosion of sites like Youtube, so I do not think we will have any trouble. They will be hosted with everything else, at least at first. In fact, they will share the same IMSLP catalogue system (so that I do not need to duplicate everything; in fact, only the FTE template will be new). The bandwidth issue is also semi-addressed by the fact that I do no expect a flood of recordings at first; rather, I expect slow trickling for the first few months, giving us time to work out the details.

We are not simply relying on DMCA for copyright. Rather, there will be essentially a contract page, indemnifying IMSLP against damages. Of course we hope not to use it, but my hope is that the intimidating language (I have some prepared) will make sure that whomever submits files actually owns the copyrights (they will also need to affirmatively "sign" the page and etc). There will, in addition, be a record of the various identifying features of the uploader, both so that we can ban the uploader when there is an infringement and that we can keep it for our records to show that we had done everything we can. Essentially, the copyright page should greatly deter flyby copyright infringers. Of course, we may lose some legitimate uploads that way, but in the long run I think it will increase the quality of the collection.

There will also be a rating system (well, the same one as with the scores) so that we can weed out recordings that are more practice-like than an actual performance via ratings. Here I presume that an outright "I like it" sort of rating would be repulsive to some people... --Feldmahler 15:19, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

As long as we have firm evidence of the uploader being the owner of the sound recording, or that they have secured permission from the owner, I see no problem at all with having recordings. In fact, I think it would enhance the site's appeal as an educational and reference resource. Obviously we would have to limit such recordings to works that are clearly public domain unless we have a case of composers performing their own works, etc. Apart from Piano Society, there really aren't that many places where classical musicians can make their own recordings easily available. Carolus 22:26, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Small coding suggestion

Now that Feldmahler is back, I would like to propose one small change (should be fairly easy): when an old revision of a PDF file is deleted (i.e. the file isn't entirely removed), it is my opinion that instead of the CR tag changing to 'Removed', it should revert to U/U/U. The Removed tag apparently acts the same as V/V/V (i.e. it doesn't display any copyright problems); files that are under copyright in the EU or especially the US could hypothetically be accessed freely should an old version be removed and no CR notices. I hope you (Feldmahler) have the time to take this into consideration. Thanks, KGill _{talk email} 19:35, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

That seems more like two bugs rolled into one. I'll try fixing either the old revision deletion bug or the removed-still-accessible bug, which should make this problem moot. --Feldmahler 21:06, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! KGill _{talk email} 22:01, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

A couple of things I can think of off the top of my head are: 1) a download counter, similar to that found at Sibley or LoadCD, which tells how many times a given file has been downloaded. 2) an audio player utility similar to that found on Wikipedia. Instead of moving to a blank page when clicking on a deep-link to a file hosted at Piano Society, it would be better if a small playback bar appeared on our page instead. Also, for links to YouTube video performances, it would be better if a new, small window opened automatically - sort of like the old HTML command "TARGET=blank." Carolus 16:14, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I can also think of two things that have been discussed before:

1. Normal users should be able to request something for CR? (courtesy Pml)
2. Instead of the 'permission error' page being displayed when someone not in the CR group clicks on a tag, it might be more helpful to have some kind of page that explains what the tag means (could even be lifted from the main text of one of the special pages) KGill _{talk email} 19:53, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Typeset Licenses

Currently, one can only be uploaded under CC-attribution, or cc-sa 3.0. As CC, of all people, has pointed out, shouldn't nc be made available?-- Snailey (_@/) _{Talk to Me Email me} 03:32, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I also agree with CC here. The Ebay gang routinely sucks up everything on this site for resale on CDs and DVDs. The only recourse composers, arrangers, or editors/typesetters have to stop them from selling their works would be the ability to employ the nc or sa versions of the Creative Commons licenses. I think it would be a good idea to have the default setting set to nc as a lot of composers, et al don't seem to understand that the lowest level (attribution only) basically allows unlimited commercial exploitation without permission. Carolus 03:40, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Having seen some of my editions unscrupulously exploited elsewhere, I couldn't be in more agreement with Carolus' points. This should be fixed. Philip Legge _{@ © talk} 06:20, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

'can only be uploaded under CC-attribution, or cc-sa 3.0' - huh? You can choose any of the licenses in the dropdown box... (not to disagree with Carolus - I also think it should be made the default) KGill _{talk email} 21:00, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Ahem: try actually submitting. Or look Here-- Snailey (_@/) _{Talk to Me Email me} 22:46, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Removal needed: Rachmaninoff-derived "arrangement" of "Flight of the Bumblebee" on IMSLP

The following file: http://imslp.org/wiki/File:PMLP03170-Flight_of_the_Bumblebee_--_for_Piano_Solo_(Yeung).pdf appears to be Rachmaninoff's arrangement of Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee," but credited to someone else. I compared it to one of the (many) recordings on YouTube. Although the (very sloppy) typeset lacks dynamics and articulation marks and respells some accidentals, this pretty much follows Rachmaninoff, except for maybe a few missing harmonic thirds or octave transpositions. The file should be removed, or at least suppressed, because of the unacknowledged derivation from Rachmaninoff, and because of the fact that Rachmaninoff's adaptation is non-PD in US and EU (although present in [TB] status). See http://imslp.org/wiki/Tale_of_Tsar_Saltan_%28Rimsky-Korsakov,_Nikolai%29 Lyle Neff 11:23, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I've re-tagged this to N/N/N and will post a question to Notnd, who claims to be the arranger. There's a difference between creating a piano transcription fresh from Rimsky's opera score and re-engraving the Rachmaninoff. Carolus 20:02, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

The item that you just re-tagged definitely has the hallmarks of the Rachmaninoff arrangement, including the changes in harmonization, additions of certain frills, etc. As regards a straight transcription of the number from Rimsky's opera, I believe I extracted the relevant pages from the piano-vocal score -- which can be played satisfactory without the solo voice part -- and posted it to the page. Lyle Neff 22:54, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

If I don't get a response from Notnd fairly soon about this, I'll probably delete it. For now, I changed the attribution. Notnd might not understand the difference between the English terms 'arrangement' and 'typeset.' It's possible that it was simply a mistake in nomenclature - that he knew all along he was just re-engraving the Rachmaninoff arrangement. Carolus 03:00, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

wikichords.com

Does anybody know anything about this site wikichords.com? It's a great idea but it's missing copyright information. And how legal is it? Gus 14:57, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

At a glance, it looks completely illegal to me. Most of the authors listed are still alive; almost certainly, everything is under copyright worldwide. KGill _{talk email} 18:56, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Aaaaand...wow: User:D20100515 has just about destroyed the place, which looks completely abandoned (no one else seems to have edited for a little while.)-- Snailey (_@/) _{Talk to Me Email me} 16:40, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Eh, most Wikis end up being abandoned after not too long, it's just the nature of the things. Incidentally, I would wager that it's not 'completely' illegal, as IIRC chord progressions in fact cannot be copyrighted. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 17:12, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

True enough - if we can copyright I-vi-IV-V, then we're all out of business :) Lyrics, however...-- Snailey (_@/) _{Talk to Me Email me} 17:26, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I love my job — D20100515 23:33, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I feel guilty now. . . Gus 01:42, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Wow, thanks guys for having completely destroyed my wiki. If you thought it was somehow illegal, maybe talking about it would have been better than stupidly vandalizing everything. Will 14:43, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I did contribute to Wikichords (one song that I transcribed myself), but I'm wary of contributing more. The music industry's lawyers will probably shut the site down anytime now. You need lawyers. And can't you just roll back all of D20100515's edits? Gus 19:42, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I remember you adding it (thanks you by the way). And yes, I can rollback its edit (even though it will be long). But for what, he will probably change them again. Do you really think that this infringe copyrights? Event if I add a disclaimer, saying something like "This is for educational purpose only, and the songs are only interpretation transcribed by the user" ? Will 19:50, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

You need professional help. Can't he speak to IMSLP's lawyers? Or try to contact Richard Stallman. I don't really know. And even if the site is completely legal you can still get sued. So. . . Gus 20:56, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

The only one here who destroyed your wiki was D20100515, who has never posted here before. Please don't confuse the comments here with any sort of endorsement of what he did. Carolus 18:12, 17 May 2010 (UTC) (IMSLP Copyright Admin)

Yes, I understand that it was the act of one single person, I didn't mean to accuse your entire community. Will 19:50, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

IMSLP doesn't have a permanent legal staff...too expensive.
Will, if you need help reconstructing, I'm sure some of our users will be happy to help.-- Snailey (_@/) _{Talk to Me Email me} 17:10, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the offer :) I'm still unsure about what to do. I think I'll get things back up, while seeking for more information about copyright on lyrics/chords. One thing is sure though, it's that I'll block edits for a while :) Will 23:36, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Forum closed

Please take discussions to IMSLP.eu :-) Philip Legge _{@ © talk} 03:14, 19 May 2010 (UTC)