Re: [Callers] Dances licensed with CC or similar (Sam Whited)

Are country western line dance copyrightable? Rich ________________________________ From: Jeff Kaufman <jeff(a)alum.swarthmore.edu> To: Caller's discussion list <callers(a)sharedweight.net> Sent: Friday, September 13, 2013 3:08 PM Subject: Re: [Callers] Dances licensed with CC or similar (Sam Whited) On Fri, Sep 13, 2013 at 2:00 PM, Sam Whited <sam(a)samwhited.com> wrote: It's not clear whether an individual contra dance, as a series of standard figures, is original enough to fall under copyright.  While choreography can be copyrighted, as you say, the question is whether a new contra dance represents sufficient "choreographic authorship". This 2012 statement of policy from the copyright office has some details:     Simple dance routines do not represent enough original     choreographic authorship to be copyrightable. Id. Moreover, the     selection, coordination or arrangement of dance steps does not     transform a compilation of dance steps into a choreographic work unless     the resulting work amounts to an integrated and coherent compositional     whole. The Copyright Office takes the position that a selection,     coordination, or arrangement of functional physical movements such as     sports movements, exercises, and other ordinary motor activities alone     do not represent the type of authorship intended to be protected under     the copyright law as a choreographic work.     -- http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2012-06-22/html/2012-15235.htm Other things that might be interesting: * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AContra_dance#Copyright_and_Social_Dance… * http://www.copyright.org.au/admin/cms-acc1/_images/9990319194f3b320fa4716.p… (It's about Line Dancing, and is Australian not US, but there's been a lot of international harmonization of copyright laws and contra and line dances are probably similar enough to be in the same category legally.) * https://www.eff.org/cases/electric-slide-litigation (There was litigation in the US over the Electric Slide, but it ended with a settlement.) * http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=14083197885283774149 (But: I'm not a lawyer, just another programmer interested in this stuff.) Jeff _______________________________________________ Callers mailing list Callers(a)sharedweight.net http://www.sharedweight.net/mailman/listinfo/callers