Choral Public Domain Library

Dear CDPL team,

recently, Tom Lehrer has made his songs freely available on https://tomlehrersongs.com and put them into the public domain. The website includes the following notce:

THIS WEBSITE WILL BE SHUT DOWN AT SOME DATE IN THE NOT TOO DISTANT FUTURE, SO IF YOU WANT TO DOWNLOAD ANYTHING, DON’T WAIT TOO LONG.

These are topical songs, but most are still very relevent today (like the warnings before nuclear war) and others are interesting contemporary documents. It would thus be valuable IMO to save this legacy.

Is CPDL the appropriate place for this? Has someone interest in copying the songs to CPDL? If CPDL is not appropriate: What other places are?

Chris

Chris,
I am a long-time fan of Tom Lehrer since about 1962. I think CPDL would be "appropriate", though I suspect Lehrer never intended his songs to be "appropriate".
I would be willing to copy them here, if there is enough interest, especially the songs he wrote.
Thanks for bringing his website to my attention!
Barry

Great that you are willing to take the trouble!

I wonder whether the copyright disclaimer on Tom Lehrer's website should be copied on every work page, or only once on his composer/lyricist page (the latter currently don't exist on CPDL). There seems to be no fitting pre-defined license on CPDL that matches, because, although Lehrer declares that he puts the songs into the public domain, technically they are still copyrighted by him, but he grants aevreyone the right to copy, modify, perform etc. his songs free of charge. It would this be best, IMOP, to copy his words about the copyright in full.