FOIA and Fun(with Music, I swear)

[elmsandr]

So, the Marine band played Baby Shark for the Nationals when they visited... Apparently somebody decided that it would be interesting to FOIA their arrangement.

It worked:

https://twitter.com/russelneiss/status/ ... 05568?s=21

So, uh, can you FOIA the entire US Band Library if you are patient enough?

Cheers,
Andy

[JohnL]

Bouncy, like an infantile cartilaginous fish

Now THAT'S funny.

[Posaunus]

Good grief. The "President's Own" playing this ditty! What would have John Philip Sousa thought?

[BGuttman]

All Military arrangements are property of the US Gummint and thus are supposedly property of all of us.

I know that a few Airmen of Note Big Band arrangements are available. They tend to try to give them to non-commercial users (non-profit performing organizations or schools).

Never hurts to ask for one if you think you'd like to play it -- as long as you don't plan to profit from it.

As to Sousa's reaction to the President's Own playing "Baby Shark", he'd probably have done the arrangement himself if it was written while he was alive. Many of his marches contain paraphrases of other tunes. "The Peacemaker" (dedicated to Teddy Roosevelt's efforts to negotiate an end to the Russo-Japanese War in 1905) is a pastiche of the Russian and Japanese National Hymns.

[elmsandr]

Good grief. The "President's Own" playing this ditty! What would have John Philip Sousa thought?

Washington Post was written to celebrate the winner of a youth essay contest... pretty sure if he got paid he would have been fine with it.

It’s music, man.
Andy

[Doug Elliott]

I think a lot of the military arrangers have their own agreements - their work is not publicly available and reverts to their own property after a period of time.

[bbocaner]

It would have been hilarious if they had redacted like one note in the second clarinet part.

[sungfw]

All Military arrangements are property of the US Gummint and thus are supposedly property of all of us.

Only if they're works for hire or, if not a work for hire, the copyright has been assigned to the government.

The fact that the arranger is, coincidentally, a member of the military (or an employee of another branch of the US government) does not, in and of itself, automatically render an arranger's composition property of the US government.