[Wikipedia-l] Copyrighted music on wikipedia.

[Brion Vibber]

Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> In the past I've had disagreements with Raul about the copyright
> status of some of the music he has been uploading.  In these cases he
> has received permission from the recording artist, but the recording
> artist may not have had the right to grant permission due to the music
> itself being new and copyrighted, or due to the performer working off
> copyrighted score.
>
> Clearing rights for music is a complex and difficult area to deal
> with, and I gave up arguing it with Raul at the time as it's clear
> that his intentions were good and that we could deal with it when
> someone finally complained.
>
> However, Raul recently uploaded
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Morissette_-_Ironic.ogg
>
> I brought this issue up to him, and his reply was that yes, it looks
> somewhat fishy but the boilerplate copyright waver on a government
> website should be sufficient.

The "boilerplate copyright waver" referenced was:
http://public.travis.amc.af.mil/pages/band/text%20site/textpolicy.html

   2. 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.

If anyone thinks this general statement about 'information presented'
somehow waives the copyrights of third parties, sorry but I call bullshit.

I've gone ahead and deleted that particular file.


As mentioned elsewhere is this thread, music copyrights are a tricky
business, with multiple stakeholders. The short answer though is simple:
the rights of the composer and lyricist (or the record company which
bought those rights) are not nullified when somebody else plays their song.

"Ironic" by Alanis Morissette doesn't become public domain when the Air
Force plays it, any more than "Jurassic Park" by Michael Crichton or the
source code to Windows XP would become public domain if an Air Force
public-reading team read them aloud and put an MP3 audio book on their
website as a demo.

Either that Air Force band has the necessary permissions *for
themselves* to post those songs on their website or they haven't thought
about it and will eventually get a nasty letter from the RIAA about
royalty payments. Either way, *we do* think about it and it's completely
unreasonable to pretend we don't know that's a problem.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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