This business about having "Hollaback Girl" (which is a pretty silly song, but hell, if that what they WANT to have on their front page, so be it) lead me to explore that page and then to a page which the "Hollaback girl article says is "similar" : Toni Basil's 80s hit Mickey. Being a child of the eighties, that was kind of a "blast from the past", but I digress....

Attached to the "Mickey (song)" article is a 48 second sound clip which is claiming "fair use".

many sources give guidelines which say that "no more than ten percent of the work or no more than thirty seconds, which ever is shorter"...

Not knowing how long "Mickey" is ultimately, I'm guessing that thirty seconds is shorter, which would mean that 18 seconds of this clip could be considered to be a copyright infringement.

Now is it really that important to a serious encyclopedia to risk being sued by the copyright holders of this song just because some kid thinks that it's a cool idea to upload a clip and it must be fair use because it's not the whole thing and it's "not for profit"....well, at least that's what the Wikimedia foundation says, anyway.

For those of you who think that "they'll never find out and probably don't care", why don't you call the copyright holders yourself and find out? :



I'm wondering how many other "fair use" audio clips are out there? If anybody finds any that are more than thirty seconds, let me know and I'll get the name, address and phone of the copyright holders....

hmm....Here's one that's over five minutes long....

Kinda hard to claim "fair use" there....and they're "gansta rappers"...I'd hate to have these guys coming after me...

This one's over fifty seconds long

This 83 second clip contains the following informative disclaimer :



Nice try, but I don't think that the TV network that produces American Idol will buy it.

Here's forty second sample of the Beatles.....

Doesn't Michael Jackson own that catalog? Doesn't he need money right now? Hey, MJ, what about a nice juicy lawsuit????

Here's an entire Alanis Morisset song claiming to be only 19 seconds...

Copyright holders :



....and we're only at the "a"'s so far.....

These "guidelines" do not appear in the Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. sec. 101 et seq.), which you can search or download from here. As near as I can tell, the guidelines were actually developed by the California Department of Education for use in their public schools. Accordingly, they have no legal force (other than in California public schools, maybe).

These durations seem awfully long for fair use. I think they don't need more than enough than what it would take to get a feel for the song 10 - 15 seconds at most. 40 seconds of Mickey is enough to get sick of it. Five minutes is DJ bathroom break length. Also what is bit-rate of the media? It would serve the purpose to use a low quality piece of media.

The actual interpretation of the Copyright Act is open to interpretation. The "10% or thirty second, which ever is shorter" might not be legally binding, but in cases like this, it's always better to error on the conservative side, rather than have some judge throw the book at you. An entire song is not going to pass fair use anyway.

There are dozens of files here which could cause potential problems...If I were Jimbo, I'd have one of my minions go through this entire section and weed out the bad ones...or better yet, just ax the whole thing. What is 48 seconds of "Mickey" doing in an encyclopedia anyway???

I think we largely agree here. For purposes of comment under the fair use doctrine, I would say that a flexible guideline makes more sense, that is: Don't use more of the copyrighted material than what you really need in order to illustrate your point. If it appears from context that you used significantly more than what was needed, you are simply asking for trouble.

Well, I would think that Mickey's level of fineness is considered high enough that he could, to put it in somewhat idiomatic terms, blow the minds of websurfers who should happen to download the .OGG file in question and actually have the software required to listen to it.

However, I do think it's unfortunate that Mickey lacks a full understanding of the effect he can have on certain people who come into contact with him. Apparently, in addition to being physically attractive to women, he has a rather disturbing tendency to cause cardiac arrest among people he comes in contact with - often requiring no more than a simple handshake!

He's also been known to overstay his welcome on occasion...

Well, I didn't know that the Mickey in question here was actually Micky Dolenz of the Monkees who Toni Basel met when she worked on the Monkees' movie "Head"...Not that I even thought to wonder who this Mickey person was in the first place, but hey, you learn something every day on WP!

According to this official policy on WP, it would seem that the 10% or 30 seconds rule, whatever is shorter, is also the yardstick used.....I think that probably every clip on the non-free use clips page would probably not conform to that. It looks like they've got a big problem to solve....

Then it's not Mickey Mouse that she's in love with?

correct... keep pointing them out and i'll keep nuking them... every one linked above is now gone.

I think that they ALL probably violate this policy, since the average pop song lasts about 3-4 minutes and the policy says that to justify a thirty-second clip, the song has to last at least five.

Nuke 'em all.

(of course, you know that lots of people are going start whining about "he's taking out all of our sound clips"....but better safe than sorry.

A few more:

this one is seventy seconds

This one is only thirty seconds, but a variable bit rate averaging about 177 kbs, which is close to CD quality....

This one averages around 192, CD quality....

As does this one.....

This one is extremely high quality audio, over 300 kbs at a variable rate. this does not pass fair use at all...

This Motorhead song is ninety seconds long

This one is over 450 kbs per second quality...

This "Ride" song is one minute and twelve seconds long

There's also a so called "public domain" sample of Turkish folkmusic. Having worked in this area, a lot of "folk music" in this part of the World is written by people who are very much alive and who very much still have their copyright. Unless you can actually PROVE that something is indeed in public domain, it's a good idea to assume that it's not. (The recording is undercopyright for this as well, but that's a seperate issue)

You've got a HUGE problem here. The only way to solve it is to nuke all non-free clips and then set very strict guidelines about length and quality.....