“Public Domain” (Used 5 times)

YouTube's Content ID system is a fascinating way for rightsholders to "block, monetize, or track viewing metrics." But it's far from perfect. The latest example is an incidental bird song that was falsely identified as copyrighted music. The result? Advertisements got slapped on the video, with revenue going to Google and the purported rightsholder.

The producer took to the web to explain that his nature video was shot "in remote wilderness away from any possible source of music." His slashdot post links to a related incident from 2009.

The 2009 copyfraud incident involved Psalters, a group of Christian anarchists who put all of their music into the public domain. Their music also happens to be quite good, and their 2004 album Us vs Us is now available on the Free Music Archive.

"A band dedicated to making music for God," Psalters are based in Philadelphia's enclave of radical Christianity. Their devotional music has an anti-establishment bent. Their website links to delassified CIA Records and Jesus Radicals alongside indie-pop gospeler Danielson's Sounds Familyre imprint, and they have shared the stage with similarly entrancing Saharan nomads Tinariwen. Psalters have a new album on the way, and details are available on their site accompanied by a full discography. Among psalters' other releases, live at 'Joe's Java' in Wilmington, OH. Currently, only the new album, "carry the bones", and "The Divine Liturgy of the Wretched Exiles" are available.

The release This Is The End, Beautiful Friend by File Under Toner is a public domain treasure trove of album noise for all artists wishing to add the authentic warm crackle of old recordings to their new works. These sounds were culled from the end of the groove of vinyl, acetate, and even cardboard records.

recording the silent final grooves of records. not so silent after all. playing them loud enough to capture the hiss, the pops, the clicks. adding a couple of digital delays, some EQ and filtering, a little reverb here and there… not much, really. it’s all in the records if you know where to listen....

if you have the means, stamp these tracks on a three sided LP. you will have three free extra end grooves, and a blank side to needle-surf.

Are the hiss, crackles, and pops on records protected by copyrights? This controversial project by File Under Toner (Anki Toner, founder of Hazard Records, the free public domain label) posed the question and got into some trouble.

photo: "Golden Turntable" by Neil Ian of Nimble Photography [license]

In 1931, the Carter Family recorded a song called "Can't Feel At Home," a spiritual about storing up treasure in heaven in the face of the world's cruelty. The chorus contains the line "I can't feel at home in this world anymore." The catalog of copyright entries produced by the Library of Congress Copyright Office contains the following notice for A.P. Carter:

Can't feel at home ; words and melody by A.P. Carter. © 1 c. Aug. 25, 1931; E unp. 45219 ; Southern music pub. co., inc., New York. 21378

A.P.'s lyric and melody is substantially equivalent to another song called "This World Is Not My Home," by Albert E. Brumley, who copyrighted his words and melody in 1936, five years after Carter. Despite the suggestion of authorship suggested by these copyrights, the song is older than either of these versions. In his essay, "Roots of Bluegrass Music," Richard L. Matteson Jr. charts its history, which reaches back in print to a 1909 hymnal and likely long before that in the oral tradition. There are two recordings that predate that of the Carter Family. One is by Sam Jones, from 1924, and the other is by The Kentucky Thorobreds, from 1927.

Sometime in the late 1930s, Woody Guthrie heard a version of the song and penned a parody of it titled "I Ain't Got No Home," which considerably changes the tone of resigned worldly rejection of the original spiritual. The line "Angels beckon me to heaven's open door/And I can't feel at home in this world anymore," becomes "Rich man took my home and drove me from my door/And I ain't got no home in this world anymore." The earliest recording of "I Ain't Got No Home" that I know of is from 1940, made by Folkways chronicler Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress.

Sixty-eight years later, in 2008, I heard "Can't Feel and Home" and "I Ain't Got No Home," and felt the latter lyric connected well with some lyrics I was writing for what would become The Emerald Arms suite. I decided to arrange "I Ain't Got No Home" as the second movement. After creating the recording and sheet music of the entire work, I set out to discover whose permission I should ask before giving the suite away online as free recordings and a score.