Public Domain question

[Richie Stoneham]

hey all, I jumped the gun and posted this in frequently asked questions, later reading that you can't post there, to my shame lol. This is the closest forum I could find for the question, I hope.

Anyways, I want to eventually copyright my song, and I have a 10 second piece of audio in it, which came from a site that hosts a warehouse of sounds. The site includes Attribution 3.0, Creative Commons, and Public Domain sounds. The piece I'm using is a Public Domain sound, so my question is; would it be perfectly legal to copyright my song with the Public Domain clip included in it. (from what I've read about Public Domain, I personally can see no issues.)

~thanks

[JeffBarnett]

I don't know the answer to your question, specifically. I'll give you one more thing to think about, though. Recordings of music are protected by multiple copyrights. There is a copyright protecting the song itself (words, melody, etc.) and another copyright protecting the recording of the song. The rules governing songs and recordings are different.

For example, "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" is a song in the public domain. But if I use a recording of Adele singing a soulful, passionate rendition of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" to an ex who scorned her, I'm violating the copyright on that recording unless I first secured permission from the copyright holder.

[Richie Stoneham]

Thanks for the reply, I suspected there was fine print on the situation I went ahead and replaced the clip with some legit sound from my program. It sounds much better as well, so I have no complaints...Would be nice if the laws weren't such a rubix cube to the average person, but that's another story lol.

~Thanks again, you guys do a great job!