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Copyrights To Reach Deep Space
bs0d3 writes "Voyager 1 is expected to reach interstellar space soon. It will be the first made made object to cross the heliosphere, which is the final stop in our solar system. Voyager 1, famously contained a gold phonographic record. The record was filled with iconic sights, images, and sounds from earth, and the prevailing message, "we come in peace". The disc was [composed] by a man named Carl Sagan, and it contained many pieces of art, songs, and images, that are all copy-written. According to NASA, 'Most of the material they used was copyrighted by the creators/owners and Sagan had to get copyright releases in order to assemble the original record. Subsequently, Warner Multimedia was able to obtain copyright releases for the 1992 version of "Murmurs of Earth" .. Unfortunately, the book and CDROM are no longer being published and are hard to find as a set.'"
Nope. That would be the Oort cloud and it's way, way further out.
Greeting From The Secretary General Of The UN
...if you're looking for either "Murmurs of Earth" or the CD-ROM, just ask a Swedish website and click on a magnet or two.
Greetings In 55 Languages
UN Greetings & Whale Greetings
The Sounds Of Earth
J. S. Bach - Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 In F, First Movement
Java, court gamelan - Kinds Of Flowers
Senegal, percussion - Tchenhoukoumen
Zaire - Pygmy Girls' Initiation Song
Australian Aborigine songs - Morning Star And Devil Bird
Mexico - El Cascabel (performed by Lorenzo Barcelata)
Chuck Berry - Johnny B. Goode
Papua New Guinea - Men's House Song
Japan, shakuhachi - Cranes In Their Nest (performed by Coro Yamaguchi)
J. S. Bach - Gavotte En Rondeaux, from the Partitia No. 3 In E Minor For
Mozart - The Magic Flute, Queen Of The Night Aria, No. 14
Georgia, chorus - Tchakrulo
Peru - Panpipes And Drum Song
Louis Armstrong & His Hot Seven - Melancholy Blues
Azerbaijan Bagpipes - Ugam
Stravinsky - Rite Of Spring, Sacrificial Dance
J. S. Bach - The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2, Prelude And Fugue In C, No. 1
Beethoven - Symphony No. 5 In C Minor, First Movement
Bulgaria - Izlel Je Delyo Hagdutin (sung by Valya Balkanska)
United States - Navajo Night Chant
Holborne - Fairie Round, from Paueans, Gaillards, Almains, And Other Short A
Solomon Islands - Melanesian Panpipes
Peru - Wedding Song
China, Ch'in - Flowing Streams (performed by Kuan P'ing-hu)
India, Raga - Jaat Kahan Ho (sung by Surshri Kesar Bai Kerkar)
Blind Willie Johnson - Dark Was The Night
Beethoven - String Quartet No. 13 In B Flat, Opus 130, Cavatina
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms
Well, if you're willing to trust uncited Wiki-facts, Carl Sagan negotiated with the rights-holders specifically to get permission for playing the pieces of music copyright-free outside of the solar system. It's a cool work-around: of course pretty much any recorded performance has copyright restrictions, but Carl Sagan figured the disk itself wasn't intended to be played by any human so legally he just needed rights outside some geographically restricted zone (say, the entire solar system) to have all the rights he needed to create potentially the widest distribution mixtape of all time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
Remeber the 'Tyson Homosexual' incident? A news site had an editorial policy forbidding the use of the word 'gay' and requiring 'homosexual' instead (It was a very conservative site, so they probably thought homosexual sounds scarier). The editorial policy was enforced by search-replace, so when they ran a story on an athlete named Tyson Gay, the search-replace did its job.