Re: Mutopia copyright/legal issues

[Richard Stallman]

    Published sheet music often comes with a copyright statement that
    prohibits public performance without payment of a fee to the owner of
    the music --- particularly music that is associated with some
    particular artiste, show, or film.

That would certainly make the music non-free.  I think the previous
message already pointed out the need for the license to permit public
performance.

            -- copyright in the postscript/midi output

If this output is produced by mechanical translation, it has no
separate copyright.  It is covered by the copyright on the input.

Aside from that, to make the music free, it is necessary that all the
various copyright holders license all the activities that the public
should be able to do with free music.