[asterisk-users] NIN Ghosts music (free download) safe for MOH?

[Tzafrir Cohen]

On Fri, Mar 07, 2008 at 09:12:52PM -0600, Tilghman Lesher wrote:
> On Wednesday 05 March 2008 12:05:40 Joshua Kinard wrote:
> > That'd be ASCAP (I think there's another one too).  They're the ones known
> > for calling up places, asking to be put on hold to listen to the hold
> > music, then querying on whether it's been licensed or not (among other
> > tactics).
> 
> BMI (Broadcast Music International) and ASCAP (American Society of Composers,
> Authors, and Publishers) are the two major licensing houses in this country.
> There are others, but these are the two 800-lb gorillas in the industry.
> 
> > Pretty much, unless it's music developed in-house, I wouldn't put it on the
> > hold line unless you're willing to risk a fight with them (and even then,
> > they're likely to make a fuss just for the heck of it).

Just to clarify one thing here - if you got a sound file with a license
that is liberal enough, you *can* use it for on-hold music. This is
stated clearly in the license.

First-off, I'm not a lawyer. I'm just saying here things that make sense
to me. Consult a lawyer of your own in case of doubt.

It seems that on-hold music is considered as a sort of public
performance. So if I can use some music in my public, commercial, shows.
If the license permits me to do "anything execept", and no exceptions
for public performances or alike, then the lices permits me to use it.

Such a license can be GPL or BSD or MIT. For various reasons
those licenses are not so often used for music. But if you want to,
e.g., use music from the game The Battle of Wesnoth as your music, feel
free:

http://packages.debian.org/sid/wesnoth-music
http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/w/wesnoth/wesnoth_1.4-1/wesnoth-music.copyright


Creative Commons did a good job at simplifying the licenses. The only
confusion is to consider all the CC licenses as one. There are a number
of CC licenses and they clearly differ by the name. If the license if
"nc" you cannot use the work for commercial uses.

Various Creative Commons licenses explicitly address the right to public
performance (explicitly grant it).

Something I can't see how to satisfy in a simple IVR system is the
requirement for attribution. If you call into an IVR, and playing the
work is considered a public performance, you still have no idea who's it
was originally.

One way to provide it is an "about this system" IVR menu item :-)

-- 
               Tzafrir Cohen
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