Agreeing with Timwi, that would be a copyright violation, but older public domain lyrics could be posted over at:
The wikisources project is a great idea and could use some more contributers/articles in general if anyone's interested.
John Davenport wrote:
Agreeing with Timwi, that would be a copyright violation, but older public domain lyrics could be posted over at:
The wikisources project is a great idea and could use some more contributers/articles in general if anyone's interested.
Speaking as an active Wikisourceror I would have no objection to the general idea of including song lyrics. Although GFDL material and rules are just as applicable to Wikisource as to the other sister projects, the practical developments have led to a much higher proportion of public domain material. That's fine.
My concern is that many contributors are oblivious to copyright. Even as a person who would be willing to push the envelope on copyright, I feel that it is still necessary for a contributor to accept responsibility for what he enters. Simple information about when something was first published goes a long way in this, as would the same simple information about a translation. Considering only the most basic criterion in U.S. copyright law, (i.e. was it published before 1923) I have found that many of these unidentified contributions are indeed in the public domain. Others are unclear, and even after some searching remain unclear. I suspect that they are in the public domain, but cannot be certain. To compound the problem, many of these things are put up by anonymous contributors who are difficult or impossible to contact. When I have a contributor name I can contact the person, and the problem is often easily resolved.
In other contexts I have expressed myself as a philosophical inclusionist, and in Wikisource I often end up needing to do research myself to save a contribution. That research is not always successful. Other criteria are available for declaring that something is in the public domain, but the responsibility of the contributor to establish that such an other criterion applies is even greater, and he should at least express what criterion he is trying to apply.
I look forward to opinions for practical solutions.
Ec