Alphbetical list of midi files

[shyamwestwind]

This might be inappropriate and hopefully its not rude, but may I say I kinda miss the long list of songs , alphabetically arrranged, in MM. It was fun to look at the list and find some song which brought back memories and then try singing them again.

Were they all copyright infringed songs which cannot be legally offered again or are all of them untouchables ?

[JohnG]

Hi Shyam,

The research that was done showed that, of the files that were tested, something like 70 percent were provably plagiarised from commercially produced files. (I saw that evidence, checked it carefully, and have absolutely no doubt that it was correct. Other people did too.) The other 30 percent or so were either often not able to be properly checked, as a commercially produced file was not available, or possibly files from other sequencers.

Clearly, not all of the roughly 7,500 files were checked, that would have taken months, if not years, to do. A sample was taken of 100 or more files. Clearly the sample could have been faulty and the proportion incorrect. However, no request for more information was ever answered. You may draw your own conclusion.

What was asked for was a small list of files personally sequenced by Glenn (as he claimed he had nothing to do with the file copying) he never responded to the request. The inference that could be drawn is that the vast majority (all?) of the files were copies, either of commercial files or ones taken from other places, the copyright information and the melody track removed.

Or am I wrong?

As the old forum could not be sure what was original and what was an illegal copy of a commercial file, it had to take action to protect the forum owners from possible litigation of being party to distributing copyright data. It also had to protect the members of the forum against using copyright files as they could be subject to litigation, however unlikely.

I have heard reports that, in some European countries, artists are being asked to provide details of the provenance of the MIDI files they are using, to make sure that the appropriate fees have been paid. I'm not sure of the truth of this though.

As we have no way of knowing what is original, or has been put into the public domain by the original sequencer, and what is a copy of a commercial file there is no way, realistically, to be able to publish anything. Without, that is, checking every single one of the more than 7,000 files.

JohnG.

Added later.
I remember that many of the files were listed on site as (not MM), I believe that many (all?) of these were files donated by the members of the forum. Whether some of them were commercial files, or not, I don't know.

[Emerald Midi]

Well stated, John.

Glenn had indeed ample opportunities to address the immense number of irregularities discovered on his web site in, which he repeatedly failed [refused] to do and has therefore only himself to blame for any subsequent actions.