Copyright and Other Restrictions

The Howard B. Waltz Music Library of the University of Colorado is not aware of any U.S. copyright protection or other restrictions on the material in this Collection apart from those copyrights held by the Libraries. Access to these materials is provided here for educational and research purposes. Written permission of the Library and/or other rights holders (such as publicity and/or privacy rights) is required for distribution, reproduction, or other use of protected items beyond that allowed by fair use or other statutory exemptions.

The audio materials in the original collection were recorded by Ben Gray Lumpkin and were subsequently given to the University Libraries under the curatorship of William Kearns in 1976. Professor Kearns also received rights to all copyrights in possession of Professor Lumpkin and permission to copyright other parts of the collection. In 1999, Professor Emeritus Kearns gave his copyright permissions to the Director of the American Music Research Center and the Director of the Music Library at the University of Colorado. Researchers are also reminded that privacy and publicity rights may pertain to certain uses of this material.

With materials collected in the course of ethnographic field research, it is difficult to identify all of the tunes performed. Thus a comprehensive assessment of the copyright status of underlying musical rights in compositions was not possible. We believe that most, if not all, of the works in this collection are in the public domain. Some songs that were performed on the original tapes were still under copyright based on the publication date. These songs were not included in the recordings that are presented on this web site.

It is the user's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright or other use restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in this collection. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permission ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item.