On 5/15/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote:
This is less about music copyright issues than about
material from
government websites. We shouldn't be too quick to fault Raul for this.
If there is any copyright violation USAF is the one that should be held
responsible. Raul is apparently being misled by the US government
Well this is why I specifically mentioned our handling of government
sourced material, I think it's an issue as well. I only jumped to
placing blame on Raul because this isn't the first time he's uploaded
music with a questionable copyright status, because this example so
blatantly fails a common sense test, and because he didn't pull it
right away when it was pointed out. ::shrugs::
It is a fact that the site's "Privacy and
Security" page says,
"Information presented on the Air Force Band of the Golden West website
is considered public information and may be distributed or copied. Use
of appropriate byline/photo/image credits is requested." The page which
lists the available music also says, "To save an MP3 to your hard drive,
right click on a song title and select 'save target as'.***"" Under
usual circumstances that would be illegal in the US.
Government websites are routinely inaccurate with such things: They
put the boilerplate notice up because it's part of policy... but then
they go on to include material they've licensed from others.
Perhaps one might raise it with their webmaster. The
music industry
would have a field day with this if it were raised with them. ;-)
Well it goes beyond the government website issue as well.. The
copyright status of music is complex, for example.. If you performed a
piece of music written by a 17th century composer, you still may not
be able to upload it to wikipedia because the arrangement you played
from was copyrighted by the publisher of the sheet music. It is
often the case that the only copy of a score that is reasonably
available is one that is covered under copyright, even for a piece of
music that was written hundreds of years ago.