Open Bibliography and Open Bibliographic Data » mhholloway

Alpha launch of Public Domain Works

mhholloway — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 15:13:07 +0000

Public Domain Works advises users on the copyright status of a particular track to encourage creators and entrepreneurs to build on cultural history.

Let’s say you want to use, sample or reissue a particular track, whether its Elvis, Elgar or Elmore Judd. Reusing even a fraction of a copyright-protected track (without the express permission of the rightsholder) leaves you liable for copyright infringement. At the very least, rights holders can restrain distribution of further copies of the infringing work, or they could sue you for damages.

So before reusing tracks in your documentary or mixtape, its best to be aware of the copyright status of the different works embodied in your chosen track. If the track is public domain then you are free to reuse as you jolly well like – without asking permission from anyone. If its protected, then you should identify the rights holder and ask permission before you reuse.

The tool is only at the alpha stage so far, which means it needs a lot of work before its full launch. The dataset (i.e. tracks which users can query) is limited, the supporting literature is scarce and its largely untested. We are however very excited to improve the tool in collaboration with users, so please leave comments on the blog, email us with bugs and get in touch via the Participate page if you want to get more involved.

Public understanding of the 'public domain'

mhholloway — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 16:29:42 +0000

Last Tuesday 17th April i went to my first Own-It event – ‘Dead or Alive: Whose art work is up for grabs?’ – and was very happy to see a roomful of artists and creative types discussing the ins and outs of copyright law.
I was however kinda surprised to hear their IP-expert solicitor use the phrase ‘public domain’ to indicate something entirely different to our use. He did not use the phrase to indicate an intellectual creation free from legal restraint but rather to indicate the inverse of private, as in publicly available works; works that have been published. Then an audience member asked about the rights-status of works in the ‘public domain’, and the expert answered with reference to published works, suggesting he did not associate the term with freedoms.
Seems the legal profession do not understand the term ‘public domain’ in the same way our community does, something which had not occurred to me. Guess i figured it was a recognised legal concept, whereas its more an emerging notion. Should we then revise our project name before going public?

PD Burn receives BBC Phonograms data

mhholloway — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 19:36:18 +0000

The kindly people at BBC Archives have supplied our project with 1.8 gigs (over 1,000,000 items) of data, which includes, in particular, listing of antique recordings. The exact rights status of this data has yet to be determined, so unfortunately for now we can only analyze its contents. Before this analysis, we’ll need to decode its contents via a manual, which decodes the rather obscure short-hand employed at Auntie back when the data was stored…