Dictionaraoke - Fair-Use meets Karaoke

stu42j writes "NPR's On the Media today interview's David Dixon from Dictionaraoke.com where 'A group of fair-use artists have created songs using the spoken pronunciation guides of words in online dictionaries. The result is an entertaining blend of computerized music and monotone singing.'"

Comments

Re:Aside from sounding ghastly, it's a political g

[devnullkac]

Actually, there are two copyrighted elements which need to be considered. The original sheet music which lists the notes that make up the song will have a copyright and separate performance right, which is probably violated by making a MIDI file and distributing it without consent ("reverse engineering" them from another performance won't exempt you). The original lyrics are also copyrighted and can't be reproduced for wide distribution (even as a vocal transformation) without consent.

www.lyrics.ch ran into this problem a few years back. They were shut down for a year or more as they sought permission from the various copyright holders and repackaged the lyrics in a "secure" format.

I don't think the legal issues are really all that jumbled. It's just a question of whether a parody of this form qualifies as a "fair use".