Discussion of all things related to Public Domain

[tom poe <tompoe AT fiai.net>]

Hello:  Thank you for your response.  I believe the next steps, then,
are to identify one song that is in the public domain, i.e., a song
created prior to 1923, and then, identify from that group, a song that
we can confidently rely on the work done by the American Folklife Center
to get permission to publish the song (offer the link to the song,
directly) for listeners to download, enjoy, and share with others.  Can
you help accomplish these two steps, and provide the link for me?
Thanks,
Tom 

On Tue, 2005-06-28 at 14:47, Folklife Reading Room wrote:
> On 28 Jun 2005, tom poe wrote:
> 
> > Hello:  Are there any recordings in your collections that are identified
> > as belonging to our country's public domain?  If so, could you identify
> > those songs which may be linked from our web site for listeners to enjoy
> > and share with others?
> > Respectfully,
> > Tom Poe
> > Charles City, Iowa, USA
> 
> 
> "Public domain" generally refers to materials that were once under
> copyright and on which copyright has since lapsed. So compositions that
> were first published before 1923 are public domain.  
> 
> But copyright doesn't deal with performer rights.  Copyright applies to
> the compositions themselves, typically as set down in sheet music or other
> kinds of scores.  Sound recordings themselves were not copyrightable until
> around 1972.  
> 
> So the persons who were recorded between 1890 and the early 1970s never
> had an opportunity to copyright their artistic creations as long as those
> were in audio format only.  At this point, it becomes a matter of ethics
> more than of legalities.
> 
> For these reasons, we require good-faith attempts to contact each
> performer or performer's estate before any of the approximately 100,000
> hours of unpublished recordings here can be disseminated.  This work has
> been done, for example, for each on-line presentation on our website, as
> well as for each commercial or published release of recordings from our
> collections.
> 
> So you're definitely welcome to create a link on your web site to our
> websites: < http://www.loc.gov/folklife/onlinecollections.html >  (There
> are over 300 hours of material, both music and spoken word, in these
> collections.)  If you want to take excerpts from any of those collections,
> however, please be sure to retain all of the necessary credit information:  
> performer's name, song title, call number, collection name, American
> Folklife Center, Library of Congress.
> 
> But if you would like to explore additional on-line publication, you will
> need to select those recordings and then do the good-faith searches.  
> We can talk you through that process.
> 
> If you have additional questions about the procedures, please let me know.
> 
> Judith Gray
> Reference Specialist
> American Folklife Center
> Library of Congress
> Washington DC 20540-4610
> 
>