# Talk:Washington, My Home

Common sense would dictate this song to be freely hi Given the prodigious amount of mp3s and lyrics floating about the web, and the absence of any lawsuit filed by the State of Washington for unauthorised proliferation of its state song, it's obvious the reverter and the editor who placed it on copyvio has a personal bone to pick. If there are no objections from others I shall remove the notice. -Hmib 08:20, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Please do not test my ability to remain civil. —Cryptic (talk) 23:45, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
Please, you have already tested my ability long enough. And my ability to remain civil is not exactly outstanding. -Hmib 01:17, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
I have provided numerous reasons to doubt whether the lyrics are public domain.  You, on the other hand, have shown absolutely no reason whatsoever to think that they are.  Instead, your arguments amount to sarcasm, a transparently false analogy with a song written in 1814, a common misperception that any work by a state government is in the public domain when in fact almost none are, that works become public domain when their rights have been transferred to a state government (when in fact they do not even if transferred to the federal government, whose original works are in the public domain), and have devolved now into ad hominem attacks.
Contrary to your snide insinuations above, I have no interest whatsoever in the subject of this article; I happened to patrol it when it first appeared on Special:Newpages and I have pages I edit added to my watchlist by default.  I will happily withdraw my objections if you provide a single shred of evidence that the lyrics are in the public domain, or expand the article to the point where they may conceivably be included as fair use, as they are at Washington State symbols.  The misperception that "if I found it for free on the Internet, I can use it wherever and however I want" does not qualify.
All of this aside, if the lyrics do turn out to be public domain, they're better suited to Wikisource than in an encyclopedia article. —Cryptic (talk) 02:29, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
(As it turns out, Washington State symbols was itself a copyvio from http://castlescribe.hispeed.com/fam/wa-symbols.html; the song's inclusion as fair use may be seen at this old revision. —Cryptic (talk) 02:37, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
One question: Copyvio from where? Lyrics are lyrics. There can be no plagiarism involved in the lyrics of a song. -Hmib 03:33, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

@Chetsford: based on the date of creation and Washington, My Home § Copyright I'm guessing the song is still under copyright, right? In that case, wouldn't that make File:Washington, My Home.ogg a derivative work? e.g. if we had a recording of the band of the Washington National Guard playing Bad Romance, it wouldn't qualify as public domain, even though it's a work of the US federal government.
Alternatively, if the song is in the public domain (perhaps because the copyright wasn't renewed?), then File:"Washington, My Home".ogg would fail WP:NFCC#1, replaceability, since a free rendition of the song could be created (even if none currently exists). Colin M (talk) 18:26, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Colin M - you're absolutely right, thanks for finding this. IIRC I added the WANG audio file before expanding the article to include the copyright section and failed to note the inconsistency after doing so. Chetsford (talk) 19:42, 2 November 2021 (UTC)