Do MIDI, WAV, and MP3 files violate the copyright laws?
MIDI, WAV and MP3 files are files which, when played back through appropriate software and hardware, reproduce sounds, music, or voices. The file, if prepared without permission, is likely to be an unauthorized derivative work, giving rise to liability under the copyright laws. The Copyright Act prevents the unauthorized copying of a work of authorship. A copyright is the set of exclusive legal rights authors have over their works for a limited period of time. These rights include copying the works (including parts of the works), making derivative works, distributing the works, and performing the works (this means showing a movie or playing an audio recording, as well as performing a dramatic work). Currently, the author’s rights begin when a work is created. Copyrighted works are not limited to those that bear a copyright notice. As a result of changes in copyright law, works published since March 1, 1989 need not bear a copyright notice to be protected under the federal statute. One
© Copyright 1999 to the present, Oppedahl Patent Law Firm LLC. Disclaimer: This is not legal advice. Click for information on the purpose of this page. MIDI, WAV and MP3 files are files which, when played back through appropriate software and hardware, reproduce sounds, music, or voices. It is commonplace for the designer of a web page to include not only image (IMG) files to provide images, but also to include MIDI or WAV files to provide audio accompaniment for the page. A WAV or MP3 file can reproduce any audio information (e.g. Homer Simpson saying “Doh”, or the entirety of a popular song as heard on the radio or on a compact disk), while MIDI files only reproduce that which can be played on a keyboard. A WAV file that is ten seconds long when played back may take ten times longer to download, while a MIDI file that plays for five minutes may require only ten seconds to download. For this reason MIDI files are increasingly popular on web sites, since they don’t take very long to lo
