[DECtalk] The Dectalk site is gone, I think.

[Tony Baechler]

Umm, no, it doesn't work that way.  If anything, that only makes the obvious
copyright problem more obvious for anyone who does a basic Google search.  I
know of a site that got busted yesterday for posting BBC TV shows.  Believe
me, they're watching.  There are many automated systems in place to watch
for such piracy.  Granted, we're not posting the actual original songs here,
but as I understand it, a DECtalk version would not count as a derivative
work, so it wouldn't get its own copyright and would not be excluded from
legal issues.  in other words, people could still get sued, but more likely
they would lose their Internet service and/or web hosting account.  Gee, I
think that happened with dectalk.com.  Actually, probably DreamHost just
shut down the site and the account holder got off with a warning, but why
take chances?

In the case of the remix you mentioned, it's one of two things.  Either they
chose to overlook the issue since no money was involved and it's a fan
effort or the person doing the remixing got permission.  Even if they appear
to not get caught, that doesn't make it legal and you can get busted without
warning.  Obviously, if we wanted to buy an ASCAP license and pay any
necessary royalties, we might get off that way, but we're talking about
thousands of dollars.

At this moment, I'm thinking more and more that it's best to leave the
archive gone and provide a static copy privately to anyone who wants it.
Nowadays, the piracy crackdown is only getting worse and I don't want to
lose my Internet service.

On 6/6/2013 8:59 AM, Tyler wrote:
> So I guess that's just a rumor that you can get away with things with a disclaimer, lol. For a while, if 
> someone did a remake of, for example, "Surfin' Safari," they would get busted. Someone else 
> remade it, but put on the file "originally done by The Beach Boys," they got away with it. And 
> you're right; the Dectalk Archive didn't attribute! So we can keep it public; we just need 
> to make it more advanced; rather than an Apache directory listing, we might need some actual HTML, 
> so we can attribute the songs to the Dectalk artists, and then "originally performed by" the original.
> Tyler Z
> On Thu, 06 Jun 2013 02:54:09 -0700, Tony Baechler wrote:
> 
> 
>> Anything published after 1988 is given automatic copyright status in the US
>> regardless of whether it has a notice on it.  The owners would be the
>> original creators of the songs, not the person who created a DECtalk version
>> of them.  With Red Dwarf, for example, it would be the BBC.  Yes, the BBC
>> does care and they will get you shut down at some point.
>>
>> On 6/5/2013 8:00 PM, Tyler wrote:
>>> Who owns the copyright to Any Dectalk songs from that archive? I've never seen 
>>> a Dectalk 
>>> recording with a copyright on it.
>>> Tyler Z
>>> On Wed, 05 Jun 2013 19:36:51 -0700, Tony Baechler wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> Just a brief note to say that dectalk.com has no IP address when doing a
>>>> host lookup, so I'm almost positive that DreamHost closed it down and
>>>> removed the IP from their nameservers.  Interestingly, mail should still
>>>> work if anyone here has a contact address for the site owner.  In other
>>>> words, I'm sure they took it down due to the previously mentioned legal
>>>> issues and/or complaints.  In my opinion, whomever would put it on a public
>>>> web host is an idiot and is just asking for their account to be cut off.
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>>
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>>
>> -- 
>> Have a good day,
>> Tony Baechler
>> tony at baechler.net
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>>
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-- 
Have a good day,
Tony Baechler
tony at baechler.net