[forwarded from http://bugs.debian.org/565713]

If the bug submitter is correct about these, it would be nice to replace these, or clarify the copyright for these files.

"the python source packages contain a non-free audio clip that is
from Monty Python's Flying Circus, which is Copyright 1969.  i doubt
that the copyright holders have put any of that material into the
public domain, and the copyright term has not yet expired.

the files are:
 ./Lib/test/audiotest.au
 ./Lib/email/test/data/audiotest.au
"

Any ideas on how to generate .au files these days?  We should fix this.

There's an old discussion about this on python-dev: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-October/049578.html

Let's go back to using this file.  It's taken from Python 1.5.1 and it's me saying "My hovercraft is full of eels".  I've already signed the contributor agreement.

Hi Martin,

Conventional wisdom on #python-dev is that you have a Solaris machine that you could test this on.  Can you do that?  I'd like to get this patch into 2.6.6 if it works.

Or maybe this one :)

Lowering priority.

However, a 3 second clip used for testing purposes in an open source programming language appears to meet the guidelines for fair use in the United States. In particular, no one is going to use the test clip as a substitute for any part of the Monty Python skit. There is no trading on the content of the clip to capture any value whatsoever; it could be a test beep and it would serve the same purpose. In short, I think this could go on under fair use principles until there was some sort of complaint. 

That said, the content of the sound file really doesn't matter in this instance. It could be replaced by a clip of Barry saying "My hovercraft is full of eels" and the same functionality would be preserved.

Shouldn't "My hovercraft is full of eels" be considered an original creation of the Monty Python, and as such copyrighted?

Note that guido.au is just him saying some crazy sh*t and I'm fairly certain couldn't be construed as copyrighted material (unless Guido is going to assert copyright over it :)

trunk: r80793
py3k: 80795