At 2002-09-09 15:53 -0700, lcrocker@nupedia.com wrote:
The page for Little Earthquakes, a Tori Amos album, includes an extract from one of the album's songs. This seems a bit dubious, copyright-wise! I've removed the link for now, to be safe. Does anyone know if the extract is legally OK for inclusion in Wikipedia? Check the history of Tori Amos/Little Earthquakes to see the page with the link (damn subpages).
If you are talking about "Ta_crucify.ogg", that's a 17-second sample as is noted on the description page for the upload. Short samples like these (I've done others on the Simon & Garfunkel and Beatles pages as well) should be no problem under US fair use law. I cannot comment on the laws of other nations.
USA law is the same as European/international law since about 1990 when the USA adopted the Berne convention rules.
For more info, see: http://www.chipdir.nl/about/ under 'Legal stuff'
The local authority representing the writers, composers and artists (BUMA/STEMRA in the Netherlands) may however have different views on which cases to prosecute and which not.
Greetings, Jaap