Copyright and Restrictions

The Library of Congress is providing access to these materials for educational and research purposes and makes no warranty with regard to their use for other purposes. The written permission of the copyright owners and/or other rights holders (such as holders of 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. There may be content that is protected as "works for hire" (copyright may be held by the party that commissioned the original work) and/or under the copyright or neighboring-rights laws of other nations.

Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item. Users should consult the bibliographic information that accompanies each item for specific information. This catalog data provides the details known to the Library of Congress regarding the corresponding items and may assist users in making independent assessments of the legal status of these items as related to their desired uses.

Items included here with the permission of the rights holders are indicated as such in the bibliographic record for each item.

Because of copyright laws, songs from the twentieth century may not be represented by very many items on the Web site. While every effort has been made to obtain permission to use these songs or portions of these songs, in some cases this has not been possible. Therefore there may be no recordings or paper items to illustrate those songs. In some instances, the rights' owner may have only granted permission to use a portion of the material online. In those cases, only 30-second excerpts of sound recordings are used, and only one or two pages of print or manuscript materials are used.

The use of U.S. Armed Forces sound recordings in no way indicates an endorsement of the Web site by any branch of the Armed Forces.

In some cases, the Library was unable to identify a possible rights holder and has elected to place some of those items online as an exercise of fair use for strictly non-commercial educational uses. The Library of Congress would like to learn more about these materials and would like to hear from individuals or institutions that have any additional information or know of their history. Please contact: Performing Arts Reading Room.

Suggested credit line: Library of Congress, Music Division

Book/Printed Material [Facsimile of first newspaper printing of The star spangled banner]