Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Evan Prodromou <evan AT prodromou.name>]

On Wed, 2006-25-10 at 20:58 -0400, Greg London wrote:
> > Some freesound samples are long ( > 3 minutes ) of sounds "observed" by
> > someone on the street. I don't know if there is any legal difference
> > between the 100 millisecond sound of a bass drum and 3 minutes of the
> > sound of children playing in the fairground.
>
> I swear I recall reading somewhere long ago that a sound
> recording of a thunderstorm or waves crashing on a beach
> was not copyrightable because there was no human _expression_
> involved.
I swear that that is incorrect information. A photograph of a thunderstorm or waves crashing on a beach is copyrightable. There is human _expression_ in the selection of the photographic subject, in the framing of the picture, and in the technical choices (f-stop, type of film, aperture, etc.). Similarly, a sound recording.
> Other sounds from people and such might get covered,
> but I thought there had to be some level of human
> "_expression_" to be copyrightable.
There does have to be some _expression_, and there is some in sound samples.

~Evan

--
Evan Prodromou <evan AT prodromou.name>