This is part of The Pile, a partial archive of some open source mailing lists and newsgroups.
Date: Tue, 09 Jan 2001 18:17:52 -0800 From: Terrio Echavez <malaya@pacbell.net> To: svlug@lists.svlug.org Subject: [svlug] perl to help with music output Hello, At my work (an NT environment), I have successfully introduced a Redhat 6.1 workstation as a tool to output midi music using TiMidity and Eawpatches and an ISA Creative Labs PNP Soundblaster 16. The GM-GS midis sound wonderful and I have downloaded about 120 good midis. This music is to be output to folks going on hold on the company phone system. Playing around with Perl - I noticed I could mix mp3s and midis using mpg123 and playmidi and looping the mix of songs with a redo. One problem I noticed was sometimes the mp3s would skip the midis, most times not - but nonetheless at times midis would be skipped. Is there a linux command to make sure that /dev/sequencer or some other resource is freed up after mpg123 has completed playing an mp3? Also, does one know of legalities of playing mp3s as telephone hold music, e.g. should the company purchase CDs? The company also wants to make advertisements (a wav file using a mic and backgound music converted to an mp3) for customers to listen to when placed on hold and some key folks see the power of Linux and Perl to mix this with midis and perhaps legal mp3s to produce quality sound output. Any help would be much appreciated. It would be a good thing for Linux to be more appreciated around my workplace. Best regards, Terrio Echavez === Date: Tue, 9 Jan 2001 11:44:17 -0800 From: Seth David Schoen <schoen@loyalty.org> To: svlug@lists.svlug.org Subject: Re: [svlug] perl to help with music output Terrio Echavez writes: > Also, does one know of legalities of playing mp3s as telephone hold > music, e.g. should the company purchase CDs? It's actually even worse than that: playing music to people on hold, if they are members of the general public, has been interpreted as "public performance", which is a copyright right (requires a license from the copyright holder, which is _not_ automatically conveyed with purchase of the CD). If you buy CDs and play them to people on hold, you can be sued for copyright infringement! In order to play commercial music to people on hold, an organization should pay copyright clearance fees to ASCAP, BMI, or other representatives of the copyright holder, in order to avoid getting in trouble. See, e.g., http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/106.html http://www.ascap.com/licensing/pdfs/onhold.pdf http://www.bmi.com/iama/business/lodging/onhold.asp ASCAP and BMI don't represent all copyright holders, but together they do represent most works published by most major record labels in the United States. ===