Thanks for the clarification.

I am glad you don't mind using new editions, because it is sometimes hard to get a hold of PD editions. :-( I hope you're right as far as fair use goes, too. I agree with you, of course, but that won't do you a lot of good in the face of a C&D letter from the RIAA.

"not thoroughly dead" now that's a phrase you don't read every day! Fortunately there are plenty of "thoroughly dead" composers who interest me. But I agree with your sentiment. Musipedia needs to include un-thoroughly-dead *chuckle* composers/bands, too.

cheers

I intended the source field for cases where attribution is required for being allowed to use content. For example, on Mutopia there are quite a few pieces that one can legally copy into the Musipedia collection provided that it is attributed to the original author and the licence terms are also linked to the data. As far as I understand, one should be okay if one puts the information about the original author of the MIDI and/or Lilypond data in the source field and picks the appropriate license (the one under which the original author published his work) from the drop-down list. That way, Musipedia makes sure the content is attributed to its creator, and the license terms that the creator picked are also connected to the content.

I am not a lawyer, but I would be surprised if a new transcription of a work by a thoroughly dead composer (dead for more than about 70 years, depending on the jurisdiction) would infringe the copyrights of authors of copyrighted editions of the same work. I guess that to be safe, one should maybe not copy information that was added by still alive editors and not the thoroughly dead composer himself. After all, if the composer is dead long enough, his work is in the public domain, and it cannot be taken out of it by someone creating a new edition of it. Only that new edition would get fresh copyright. But this is just my understanding of it.

If the composer is not thoroughly dead, the situation is probably a lot trickier, and fair use comes into play. I guess one could argue about whether sticking a musical theme that takes less than 30 seconds to play into the collection would be fair use or not. To be really safe, one could just not add such material to the collection and rely on the Musipedia Web search for finding it. That way, Musipedia would be in the same situation copyright-wise as Google is for the texts one can find with it.
But because of the severe limitations of the quality of metadata one gets that way, I think it would be a pity to restrict the Musipedia collection to really old themes and tunes.

I was wondering what to put in the "Source" field. I have access to a few old PD editions, but mostly not. My concern comes from things like a copyright recording of a PD work, or a copyright edition of a PD manuscript. Do transcriptions on Musipedia constitute infringement? Is such a transcription a derivative work of the PD original or of the recording I heard (and listed in the source)? My guess is that either way it's covered by fair use, but IANAL.

Also, what if I know of a piece because I heard it performed or performed it myself? It would seem that unrecorded performances are not under copyright according to US law, but the songs themselves might still be.

For now, I guess I will only stick with known PD editions, or my recollection of non-recorded performances of PD works (however, that's not really a very good source).
Cheers

Sorry about that. I somehow managed to create a bug that is only visible to non-admin users, and I didn't test it with such a user ID.

Uh oh. Now I can't add new melodies. I get the following error:
"Query failed : You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '' at line 1"

(I kept it in this thread because I think it might be related to the change. If not, please move to a new thread.)

Hello,

I have now added a field for the license. This can help us keep track of which entries have gotten some license terms attached by their original contributors.

I included a choice of licenses because I don't think it would be easy to come to a consensus among everybody who has contributed something in the past and therefore should have a say over the conditions under which his works can be used. I did not include any "no derivatives" license because this would be against the idea of a collaborative collection, and by contributing something to a collaborative collection, the submitters have already indicated that they approve of the creation of derivative works.

Only the original submitter can edit the license terms (the user who is listed as the submitter of version 1). Anybody else can only modify the contents. It is impossible to contribute a new entry without picking a license. Also, once a license is picked and version 1 is submitted, the license cannot be changed anymore.

I am thinking about adding a facility for picking a license for all entries one has created in the past and that don't have a license attached yet. But since such a thing does not exist yet, every contributor of multiple old entries is welcome to e-mail me the information what license he would like to have attached to his contributions. I can then set all old entries by a certain contributor to a certain license with one SQL statement.

I hope this addresses the problem adequately?

Rainer

ABC notation does not appear to have a copyright field. So my suggestion will not work for them.
I don't know enough about image file data structure. Do they have a copyright field in the header like MIDI files do? I don't think .gif does. Maybe the copyright could be in the actual image.

I like your idea of having the ability to select licenses, but I see potential problems.

I like CC-by-sa-nc, but some people don't like -sa- because it's not free (libre, frei). Further, some people don't put their real name, so -by- would be hard to enforce. Also, due to the communal nature of this project, things could get a little confusing when multiple people contribute to the same entry. I think this is why Wikipedia uses GFDL, but I find it too confusing itself.

To make matters worse, some people who have contributed might *not* want their rights released, but they might not be reachable. So any retroactive licensing might not be lawful. Plus, there's still the question of whether transcribing from a copyrighted edition is infringement, but that's another animal altogether.

Then there's the international problem. Are the servers in Germany? Most EU countries have some common sense stuff, like a minimum standard of creativity, so maybe a Parsons-only entry would not qualify. If they're in the US, though, all bets are off. People there can copyright just about anything (besides blank forms and government work).

I don't know, Rainer. I think we might be better off just saying all entries will be treated under X license. And we should come to consensus as to what that X should be. My vote is for CC-sa(-by-nc). I would be willing to accept GFDL, even though I don't fully understand it. I'm wary of the Public Domain with music, because I've just seen too many commercials (Applebee's in the States comes to mind) with terrible mutilations of popular songs.

Cheers

I wasn't aware of that - good to know.
However, there are also entries with abc instead of Lilypond, some where the sheet music is generated in yet some other way and only uploaded as a bitmap, and some without any sheet music.
Cheers,
Rainer

What about using the standard Mutopia headers in Lilypond? They include a copyright section. Seems like there's no good reason to re-invent the wheel. :-)

Also, anything I enter is public domain unless otherwise noted.

Good point.

What keeps me from immediately putting all content under such a license is an omission I made earlier: While I do ask contributors to not break the copyright of others, I don't ask them to give up parts of their own copyrights. So, I am not sure if it is okay to introduce a very liberal license to content where the current license situation is a bit unclear.

How about adding a new license property to each entry with the following possible values:
- unclear
- CC-SA
- GFDL
(maybe some more, or only one other than "unclear")

with a default of GFDL for new entries, and "unclear" for all existing entries. Of course, it should not be possible to change this setting after it has been set to something other than "unclear", and also not to enter something new with "unclear". Only contributors who have edited an entry in the past (or maybe only the original contributor) should be able to change something from "unclear" to a specific license.

Would that be a good solution? Are there better ideas?