Discussion:
California -- Is it legal in the US to copy a musical score from a different country (in this case France) copyrighted in 1905 with all authors having been deceased for longer than 70 years, and sell said copies to the general public? The argument being that the edition from which it is copied has been out of print for almost 100 years and is absolutely unavailable aside from a small number of university libraries. To my knowledge the original publisher no longer holds even the performance rights as the company no longer exists -- although the performance rights must belong to someone as they relate to rental of instrumental parts, etc. Any help is appreciated.
Answer:
"s it legal in the US to copy a musical score from a different country (in this case France) copyrighted in 1905 with all authors having been deceased for longer than 70 years, and sell said copies to the general public?"
Yes.
Any and all rights under copyright have expired, and the work is in the public domain. Basically, anything originally copyrighted or published prior to January 1, 1923 is in the public domain, and can be freely used by anyone.
However, remember that YOU cannot now get a copyright on the work -- so if you intend to try and make some money on this, feel free, but know that you can't keep others from doing the same thing as well...