MuseScore is kind of incapable of doing any better. And I don't mean that just in a "this company is malicious and needs to be burned down to the ground" sense[0]. I mean it in the "they have a gun to their head" sense.
So, it turns out that it's actually just kind of outright illegal to trade notation charts around. In fact, it's exactly as illegal as trading song recordings around. This is because music copyright has two souls: the copyright over the song itself and copyright over the individual recording of a performance of that song. And it turns out that creating a platform for trading notation charts around is a good way to get sued by the music industry.
Ultimately, MuseScore got bought out by Ultimate Guitar. If you don't know them, they were just outright hosting guitar tab books, for money, which is arguably more illegal than what MuseScore was doing. But because they were so big and persistent about it they had enough leverage to actually negotiate a license rather than just get shut down[1]. So the end result is that now they're called Muse Group and MuseScore's online tab chart database has to treat everything as owned by a major label, to the chagrin of Touhou fans[2] and anyone else working with music that's actually licensed for free distribution.
My personal opinion is that I don't think you could run this sort of business ethically, because musicians do not pay for shit. I'm also not entirely sure they could back out at this point - it might run counter to something in their settlement with the music labels.
[0] The Tweet linked to in the original blog post of someone from MuseScore threatening to get someone deported over song piracy is evidence of that too - or it would be, except Hector Martin wisely nuked his Twitter once Musk took over.
[1] This is also how Crunchyroll got started.
[2] Which, coincidentally, is how Hector Martin went down the rabbit hole of documenting all of Muse Group's crimes against decency.
So, it turns out that it's actually just kind of outright illegal to trade notation charts around. In fact, it's exactly as illegal as trading song recordings around. This is because music copyright has two souls: the copyright over the song itself and copyright over the individual recording of a performance of that song. And it turns out that creating a platform for trading notation charts around is a good way to get sued by the music industry.
Ultimately, MuseScore got bought out by Ultimate Guitar. If you don't know them, they were just outright hosting guitar tab books, for money, which is arguably more illegal than what MuseScore was doing. But because they were so big and persistent about it they had enough leverage to actually negotiate a license rather than just get shut down[1]. So the end result is that now they're called Muse Group and MuseScore's online tab chart database has to treat everything as owned by a major label, to the chagrin of Touhou fans[2] and anyone else working with music that's actually licensed for free distribution.
My personal opinion is that I don't think you could run this sort of business ethically, because musicians do not pay for shit. I'm also not entirely sure they could back out at this point - it might run counter to something in their settlement with the music labels.
[0] The Tweet linked to in the original blog post of someone from MuseScore threatening to get someone deported over song piracy is evidence of that too - or it would be, except Hector Martin wisely nuked his Twitter once Musk took over.
[1] This is also how Crunchyroll got started.
[2] Which, coincidentally, is how Hector Martin went down the rabbit hole of documenting all of Muse Group's crimes against decency.