Somehow it just seems natural that the numbers radio phenomenon would run into copyright problems. You might wonder about the public domain and spy operations, but never mind:
Enter Wilco, a quintet that started as an alt-country act and is now boldly going where no rockers have gone before. Two years ago the group released an album with a song called "Poor Places." It starts as a droopy ballad, but eventually the drums fade, the melody evaporates, and up roars a truly terrifying hurricane of sound. As it builds to a climax, a woman's urgent semaphore peeks through the noise:
"Yankee. Hotel. Foxtrot. Yankee. Hotel. Foxtrot. Yankee. Hotel. Foxtrot."
It's a track from "Conet," the voice of Ms. International Radio Operator herself. The band sampled it and used it to name the album. "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" would earn Wilco its strongest reviews ever -- it was No. 1 that year in the Village Voice national poll of music critics -- and it sold decently, too.
The band didn't pay for that "Conet" loop, and in 2002 Fernandez sued.
Vanilla Sky (2001) is mentioned, too.
You might wonder about the public domain.
Copyright in this case has less to do with the transmission and more to do with the ownership of the CD used to carry the sound.
You cant copy from someones CD without permission, no matter what is on the CD, including silence. Believe it or not someone was sued in the UK for violating the copyright of a work that was made up of nothing but silence.
Posted by: James Mason | August 03, 2004 at 15:05