Is there a way for my pieces to be stolen?

• Aug 24, 2017 - 06:17

I just got my account as of today and I was looking around the forums and I see that some people are getting their pieces stolen. That's a big Issue for me because I hold my pieces very dearly, as I'm sure everyone does, and I don't want someone else taking credit for them. How do I prevent that? And also, How would I know if someone stole my piece? Does Musescore alert me if my piece has been downloaded by someone else or changed in any way? If someone did steal my piece and they tried to change something about it, would it change the original that I downloaded?


Comments

If you don't want them to be downloaded, don't publish them in the first place.
As far as I can see you don't have any score publisched on MuseScore.com, so where's your problem?

In reply to by marcopolo1622

It's not clear what you mean by "stolen" in this context. If someone wishes to use your music for prupsoes you have not authorized via for your license statement, they need to get your permission. If you find someone not doing this - extremely rare that someone would do anything but listen to it online or download it to liste locally & print, which is the whole reason for publishing in the first place - then you can write them and ask them to stop.

Your stuff is protected under copyright law, so technically it's illegal for someone to take your stuff and claim it as their own. What I do is every time I create a new score, I put my name in the part that says "copyright". Once that copyright is saved, no one, not even me, can change it. So when someone downloads your score and changes anything (even the composer's name), your name will always be at the bottom of each page. Musescore does not alert you if someone has downloaded you piece or if they are changing it. No, it does not change your original score. I actually had the same fear that someone would take credit for what I did. Nothing like that has happened yet.

In reply to by Rebecca Y

At least in part this is pure fantasy. You believe there can be a file, a sequence of characters such that it is impossible to make a copy with something (the "copyright" setting) changed? Musescore files are in human-readable XML, so this would be laughably simple to do.

In reply to by Rebecca Y

It is actually quite simple to change the copyright message should you ever need to: go to File / Score Properties. As mentioned though, even if we took this facility away, it would still be possible for anyone with a ZIP program and a text editor (which is to say, everyone who has access to a computer that is capable of running MuseScore in the first place) to modify the file in this or other ways.

Basically, posting a score means it is possible for someone to use it in some way you might not like. It's also possible they will do incredible things with it that would make you even more proud to have made it available than you might already be.

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