Russian-based music download site

[britishcomposer]

When trying to search for information about an unknow russian composer I stumbled across this site:
http://www.classical-music-online.net/
Has anyone of you heard about it? Can't imagine that this should be legal. Obviously the files are uploaded by users not by the record companies.
Come on, convince me to let my greedy fingers from it!

[fyrexia]

You actually can find all the Golubev i previously uploaded here :O
Seems like i can start to stop uploading to mediafire

Tony

[eschiss1]

odd to describe Aho's first symphony as his last though, or do I misunderstand...

[Mark Thomas]

Many of the files which I checked at this site are very clearly rips of currently-available commercial recordings and therefor illegally infringing copyrights. I'm going to steer well clear and would advise you to do the same.

[britishcomposer]

odd to describe Aho's first symphony as his last though, or do I misunderstand...

Nor was Aho 86 when he wrote it.  Seems the reviewer has confused two characters?

[eschiss1]

I wonder if one can deduce who it might be -without- downloading it, just from knowledge of contemporaries (and without assuming that it is a first symphony, but assuming at least at first that it is an orchestral work and a - numbered - symphony   - that is, that as much of the information is accurate as possible until one can't!) but that sort of game might perhaps be left to private message I suppose.  My memory rots at its core for just about everything but music nowadays and I'm only in my 40s...

[britishcomposer]

May I offer an educated guess?
Vaughan Williams wrote his last Symphony in 1956-57 and revised it in 1958 when he was 86. So, perhaps...

[britishcomposer]

Okay, you need not download the files, you can stream them. I did so for a few seconds just to make clear that it IS Aho's first symphony. The reviewer was online and there is a 'add comments' button but it didn't work. No idea how to find out what's going on in his brain.

[febnyc]

Hmmm - the opening minutes of the Rybnikov Symphony No.6 sound interesting - powerful.

Any one know of a recording?

[chill319]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall that the Soviets were not signatories to the Berne convention, so that copyright issues are lax with them. There is a similar Russian sheet music site that offers recent publications such as Steven Hough's edition of some late music by York Bowen. Perhaps it is legal to download within Russia itself, but I would suppose not in any country that participates in modern intellectual property right agreements.

[ahinton]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall that the Soviets were not signatories to the Berne convention, so that copyright issues are lax with them. There is a similar Russian sheet music site that offers recent publications such as Steven Hough's edition of some late music by York Bowen. Perhaps it is legal to download within Russia itself, but I would suppose not in any country that participates in modern intellectual property right agreements.

Your first sentence is indeed correct; however, that very laxity is what creates a climate in which Russian download sites frequently transgress, in the sense that, as downloads know no territorial restrictions, making them available from Russia can and often does lead to the open flouting of other nations' copyright laws. I am no expert on Russian intellectual property law, but the Stephen Hough example that you cite surely suggests that what may be legal in Russia has no business to extend to music written by anyone not subject to such laws or lack thereof.

[eschiss1]

britishcomposer- insects and bells, most likely- must be too loud in there for the reviewer to get stuff quite right. We'll let it slide this time.

[britishcomposer]

I contacted the webmaster just for fun to enquire about the copyright question. Not to frighten him off at the outset I asked if he could confirm that downloads from this site were legal (!) – from a European point of view. He answered immediately:

"i am sorry. i dont understand english. pls send me your message on Russian"

I translated my email with google and sent him two versions to make sure that he would understand. (One translation from German  and one from English to Russian). This was his answer:

"Sorry, I could not understand the contents of this letter"

So much for that...

[Christopher]

Hi Mathias - copy/paste this to him:

Могли бы Вы, пожалуйста, подтвердить, что контент на Вашем сайте легальный?  Какие законы  об авторском праве  регулируют его?

(it says "Can you confirm that the downloads on your website are legal? What copyright laws are they covered by?")

And let me know if you want anything else in Russian!

[britishcomposer]

Thanks, Christopher!
I have sent another email but I have a strange suspicion that he understood fairly well what I asked... 
Let's see!