The following is a provisional document, although already applies in law. A more detailed document will be available shortly.
Provisional Summary of Copyright Policy & User-Licence: These are legally-binding contracts that already apply between you, me and others. They are enforceable in all countries that subscribe to the principles of the Berne Convention & the W.I.P.O. Copyright Treaty and their various updates (cf. the W.I.P.O. portal). That means practically all countries on the planet, and certainly all those with membership of the U.N. — it's probably not worth pretending it doesn't apply to you or your country's legal system. Even the most xenophobic nations tend to be in the U.N. You might be able to get out of this if you live on Mars, but even that's debatable. Get used to it — copyright law exists, and applies to you, wherever you are. Yes, "even on the internet". And actually, it's a lot simpler than most folks think, or most lawyers pretend. Here's how it applies to this website:
What You CAN’T Do: Except for the specific cases outlined below you may not print, copy, extract, modify, redistribute or re-publish any digital material or its content from this website for any purpose whether commercial or not without first gaining explicit written permission from the legal owner of said digital material (ie. me, unless otherwise stated). "Digital material" means anything and everything that you see and hear (and any of my technical applications that deliver them to you) that is directly hosted on this website, or that has been licenced from this website for use elsewhere, or has been re-used from this website elsewhere. It means all my text (including musical transcriptions), images (static and moving), sounds, and web applications. They're free for you to use in the ways the website and its policies allow, but they ain't your property, and you can't legally use them in any other way without permission.
What You CAN Do: I am licensing you (in fact, I'm encouraging you) to use this website as an entertainment and musical research resource, and especially as a reference library of source material (ie. scores) for the creation of real, live performances of your own. By this, I mean personal (see below), academic or instrumental study/rehearsal and/or live/recorded/broadcast public performance of such as constitutes your own original live or electronically performed work. Although I am (believe it or not!) legally entitled to claim royalties such as P.R.S. revenue for the latter uses of my score editions, I will not claim performance, recording or broadcast rights royalties for any original performance that you create from my sources. Mind you, if you do end up with a lucrative chart-hit using any of the tunes you found through my work, I wouldn't say no to a wee "thank you" note written as payable to the bearer on demand. This website isn't a hobby, and it costs me a lot of time, money and work to give it to you at no cost, so all contributions will be gratefully squandered — and publically-acknowledged on the website.
What "Personal Use" DOESN’T Mean: It absolutely does not mean you "personally" redistributing my scholarly or digital material or its content (or any content derived from it) to other people in any form, whether that be in your own or anyone else's book, website, e-mail discussion group, film, documentary, radio show, at an academic conference, or in any other kind of public forum, whether social, professional, commercial or not. By definition, no public use is personal use. If you want to share my material with someone else, give them a link to the bit you want to share with them from this website. That's also the easiest and quickest way to share it. It's also perfectly legal, and I'll be more than grateful to you for linking to the website! :-)
Note to Other Copyright Owners: I take a lot of care to make sure that I don't infringe on other people's copyyrights, but if you feel that I've failed in this, please do drop me a line and I'll try to resolve the issue as quickly and respectfully as possible.
Governing Law for Legal Disputes: The Governing Law for all ScotMus.com legal disputes is Scottish Law ("the law of Scotland"), which will take account of other applicable U.K., E.U., U.N. or your own local law, but will also take precedence over them and be applied within the working conventions of the Scottish Court system.
I hope you find these terms fair — they're certainly more generous than you'll find in the average musicological publication. But although they're relatively generous terms (for a musicologist), I will be actively enforcing them (and I have a reputation for diligence in such things in certain quarters). Anyway, if there's anything you'd like me to clarify, please don't hesitate to drop me a line.