[mb-users] Adding links to your own cover scans?

[Simon Reinhardt]

Philip Jägenstedt wrote:
> For such cases like these, if I have a cover scan myself which I want
> to make available, what would you suggest? That it is legally possible
> should be clear from what Wikipedia does.

No, this is not the same. The English Wikipedia can use them because of the Fair Use law in America - the German Wikipedia for example is not allowed to use them and MB isn't as well. AFAIK the reason MB is allowed to display the Amazon ones is because it provides a link to where you can buy the CDs from them.

> No matter what the method,
> doing it over archive.org seems reasonable. If I find something on
> some very random place (a forum, a blog, photo album) is is reasonable
> to simply make a archive.org (described in
> http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/CoverArtSites) copy and use that?
> 
> If I have a cover but it doesn't exist on any public website, would it
> be ok to put it on a webserver of my own, throw archive.org at it and
> submit it to MusicBrainz? I know that I would  be commiting a crime
> (in some territories), but I don't think archive.org would and
> MusicBrainz certainly wouldn't.

>From what it says on the wiki page this seems ok - your risk then. :)

> I repeat that my intention isn't to do this for Metallica or something
> which can already be provided via another cover partner, but for all
> the rare stuff I edit where I think having a cover greatly improves
> the quality of the database.

I don't think any lawyer cares about your purity of motives. ;)

Simon (Shepard)