# Talk:Amen break

Probably a wider question on licensing, but seeing this on DYK made me think – is a waveform a derivative work? The original audio must have been used in the creation of the waveform image. MIDI (talk) 09:36, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Technically? No doubt about it.
Legally? I wouldn't worry about it. I wonder if there's a distinction between a (sufficiently zoomed-out) waveform and a spectrograph, as you can retrieve the original audio with appreciable resolution from the latter but not the former. Remsense诉 09:45, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
Appreciate that a waveform showing amplitude over time is not sufficient to reconstruct (or even approximate) the original work, but that's not relevant in this being a derivative work of copyrighted media. Reading WP:DERIVATIVE, my interpretation is that while we may be able to justify the waveform's inclusion under fair use, it's not something that can be released as PD, as the file has been, without the recording itself being PD. I think I'll raise this elsewhere as it's not specific to this article. MIDI (talk) 14:00, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
Please link the discussion if you do, I'd be interested. Remsense诉 14:02, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
Will do - I'm gonna strike the image from the MP (currently leaving a note on Talk:Main page) then when I find the time I'll start a topic somewhere. The only previous mention of this I've found is Wikipedia:Media_copyright_questions/Archive/2008/September#Screenshots_of_copyrighted_Audio_files, which suggests that other editors may agree with my thoughts (I'll tag them in too). MIDI (talk) 14:21, 19 June 2024 (UTC)