Michael Geist wrote an interesting article about a situation where a popular Canadian website containing public domain music scores has shut down after getting a demand letter from an Austrian music publisher. Seems that the laws in Austria regarding public domain are different enough that some of the content might have been unlawful to post in Austria.

Michael points out several reasons why this is troubling, including the perspective that if this is correct, then the public domain becomes an offline concept, since posting works online would immediately result in the longest copyright term applying on a global basis.

Read Michael’s post