Rumblefish Claims It Owns 'America the Beautiful' By United States Navy Band

ptorrone writes: Adafruit is now shipping the USA-made open-source Arduinos. In celebration Ladyada the engineer posted an Arduino rotating in front of an American flag with the public domain "America the Beautiful" by the United States Navy Band as background music. Adafruit immediately received notice from from YouTube stating that the song is owned by Rumblefish. Rumblefish previously claimed to own copyright to ambient birdsongs, too.

Comments

Re:Typical Slashdot...

[jk379]

From the link:
"
America the beautiful / Samuel Ward [sound recording], Title: America the beautiful [sound recording] instrumental and vocal, Composer: Ward, Samuel. Arranger(s) Dragon, Carmen. Performing Ensemble: United States Navy Band. Lyricist: Bates, Katharine Lee. Publisher(s): Department of Defense. Form: sound recording.

Note(s): Taken from CD entitled: “Remembering the Navy Hour.” Featuring the Navy Band and Sea Chanters. Recorded by Sheffield Recording, Ltd., Inc. at the George Mason University Center for the Arts Concert Hall.

Credit: Performing Arts Encyclopedia, Library of Congress.

This Composition is in the public domain because its copyright has expired. This applies to the United States, where Works published prior to 1978 were copyright protected for a maximum of 75 years. See Circular 1 “COPYRIGHT BASICS” from the U.S. Copyright Office. Works published before 1923 are now in the public domain.

This composition is also in the public domain in countries that figure copyright from the date of death of the artist (post mortem auctoris) in this case Katharine Lee Bates (words), (August 12, 1859 â March 28, 1929), Samuel Augustus Ward (tune) (28 December 1847 â 28 September 1903), and that most commonly runs for a period of 50 to 70 years from December 31 of that date.

This media file is a work of a U.S. Department of Defense employee, made during the course of the person’s official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the media file is in the public domain.

Generally speaking, works created by U.S. Government employees are not eligible for copyright protection in the United States. See Circular 1 “COPYRIGHT BASICS” from the U.S. Copyright Office.
"

Hold them liable

[bl968]

Reuters claimed to own Nasa's video of the 1969 Moon Landings

CD Baby claimed ownership of music by an artist sang by the artist and used with their permission.

I have frequent claims on classical music especially military marches that are clearly out of copyright and are live performances.

The organization should lose all rights to claim copyright via youtube's content id after one false claim of copyright.

Youtube should also be liable for allowing blatantly false claims once they have received notification of the copyright status of public domain works.

Re:Typical Slashdot...

[bl968]

Except for the fact that all works by U.S. Government employees in the line of duty are by default public domain, and not eligible for any copyright protection at all.

So I seriously doubt that the US Navy has an agreements with Rumblefish or any other organizations to collect royalties for their performance. It wouldn't be legal if they did.