SMO engine failure

[hayek]

Crash landing near SMO this afternoon.
http://www.tmz.com/2015/03/05/harrison-ford-plane-crash-landing-golf-course-santa-monica/

According to the audio, the pilot declared an engine failure after takeoff and attempted to return.

Time codes from 2200Z archive at KSMO:
Take off clearance at 19:42
Emergency declared at 21:15

I can't edit it right now, at work.

[hayek]

Here's the unedited archive.

[dave]

Edited to add archive from declaration of emergency onward.

[hayek]

...and TMZ copies the audio without credit to liveATC.   

[anuoldman]

yup TMZ definitely broke copyright.... not surprising... but they could have simply asked and credited you guys

[paul77706]

It was also on CNN with no credit that I could see.

[adanto6840]

I personally feel like using the audio without attributing the source to LiveATC is poor judgement & borderline unethical.

That said, I'm genuinely curious -- and I apologize in advance if this is considered 'off topic' for this thread -- but I'm actually curious how the legal intellectual property rights ownership / assignment works when it comes to ATC recordings in the US.  Note that I am not a lawyer, though I do enjoy law & legal concepts!!

As far as I can tell, there are two 'issues' at play here:

1)  Copyright Ownership
Given that the recordings are taken from FCC-licensed public frequencies over-the-air, who actually owns the copyright to the recordings?  My gut instinct would be that the recordings are actually in the public domain, but I'm really not sure without digging substantially deeper into the relevant laws & potentially even FCC regulations, etc...

Also, what about clips made by specific users, from LiveATC archive recordings, who then use their own software & 'creativity', if you will, to splice multiple recordings together, cut out dead space, etc... 

Assuming the recordings start in the public domain, it'd be possible that the clips stay in the public domain as well -- unless a legal "bar of creativity" is met for them to be considered a derivative work, though that may be a very low bar. 

2)  LiveATC Terms of Use
I'm assuming that the ToU prevent un-attributed use of the audio recordings found here, but if the recordings truly are in the public domain to begin with, then the ToU becomes a bit more 'muddy' because I believe, in most cases, copyright law is preemptive and would supersede the ToU.  If the recordings aren't public domain however, then I'm not sure. 

But frankly I have a hard time believing that LiveATC [or anyone, really] would own the copyright to recordings [of other people / aviators] just because they record the frequencies & aggregate the data.

Again my apologies for getting pretty off-topic;  is something I've wondered about before though and since the topic kind of came up I figured I'd reply.  Mods, feel free to delete and/or move this to it's own thread at your discretion, and again, my apologies if I've gone way too far off topic! 

And again, note that IANAL! 

[hayek]

I'm actually curious how the legal intellectual property rights ownership / assignment works when it comes to ATC recordings in the US

The recording made by the FAA is a government work, and is in the public domain.  But I'm not aware of any principle in copyright law that would make a recording made by a private party free from copyright protection.  As for creativity, which is often necessary to show that work is protectible under copyright law, the selection of receiving sites, antenna placement, and recording equipment used are surely enough to create copyrightable protection in the LiveATC recordings.  As to who owns the copyright (i.e. whether its the individual who maintains the reception station, or LiveATC, that would depend on the terms of use between LiveATC and that individual).

[dave]

Appreciate all the comments, but we are indeed far afield now so I am going to lock this thread