Author talk:Thomas Andrew Lehrer

Lehrer is releasing his lyrics into the public domain

 * https://tomlehrersongs.com/ —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:45, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I've uploaded all the lyric sheets to Commons for easy transcription: commons:Category:Tom Lehrer lyric sheets. –IagoQnsi (talk) 14:33, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

In case it's deleted in the future, the text of his website declare as of November 23, 2020 "I, Tom Lehrer, and the Tom Lehrer Trust 2000, hereby grant the following permission:

All the lyrics on this website, whether published or unpublished, copyrighted ior [sic] uncopyrighted, may be downloaded and used in any manner whatsoever, without requiring any further permission from me or any payment to me or to anyone else.

Some lyrics written by me to copyrighted music by others are included herein, but of course such music may not be used without permission of the copyright owners. (The translated songs may be found in their original languages on YouTube.)

The music of all the songs on this website that were written by me may also be downloaded and used as described above.

In other words, all the lyrics herein and all the music herein that was written by me should be treated as though they were in the public domain.

In particular, permission is hereby granted to anyone to set any of these lyrics to their own music and publish or perform their versions or parodies or distortions of these lyrics without fear of legal action.

(There is no legal way to unilaterally transfer a song into the public domain, so this disclaimer is intended as an end run around the copyright laws.)

Note: This website will be shut down on December 31, 2024, so if you want to download anything, don’t wait too long." Peace.salam.shalom (talk) 23:59, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Internet Archive link from November 23, 2020. Erick Soares3 (talk) 22:41, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Note that the text of the release was just updated to cover the remaining materials archive link for December 27, 2022. / Lokal Profil (talk) 00:03, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

Transcription projects
Moving this off the main page, wanted it to still be available. —CalendulaAsteraceae (talk • contribs) 19:42, 8 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Index:Tom Lehrer song lyrics (website).pdf
 * Index:Tom Lehrer lyrics, The George Murphy Campaign Song.pdf
 * Index:Tom Lehrer lyrics, George Murphy Addenda.pdf
 * "My Home Town", transcribed from Index:My Home Town music.pdf
 * "Silent E (private version)", transcribed from File:Silent E (private version) music.pdf

Dead links
The links to the audio files for the Physical Revue are dead. Is it OK to add archive links from archive.org? FunnyMath (talk) 09:07, 18 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Yep! I'm pretty sure the links are just dead due to linkrot, not due to copyvio. —CalendulaAsteraceae (talk • contribs) 17:14, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Addenda, work structure, what even is a work
From WS:PD. @Xover, this seems like a better place to discuss your concerns. Can we really say it has been subject to any editorial control or been previously published by a reputable publisher? Is the generated PDF version of the Word file version of what was really published as a web page meaningfully "a scan"? Is Elements 103 to 118 a work unto itself, or is it an excerpt of "The Elements"? Is this an evolving work, or is the version that includes elements 103 to 118 just an edition of the abstract work? Is this even "The Elements" we're talking about as the work, or is the work the webpage hosted at the address https://tomlehrersongs.com/the-elements/?

@Beleg Tâl seems to take the stance that https://tomlehrersongs.com/ is a work and the pages are sections of that work, which seems like a good approach to me—basically treating it like a digital equivalent of the songbooks Lehrer has previously published. (I'm not sure which if any of those are PD; for example, Too Many Songs by Tom Lehrer with not enough drawings by Ronald Searle assigns a separate illustration copyright to Searle.)

I'm not sure how we should present the works which come in multiple parts—The Elements/The Elements (Aristotle version)/Elements 103 to 118, and also George Murphy/The George Murphy Campaign Song/George Murphy - Addenda—one page? several pages?

I do think that Tom Lehrer's update to "The Elements" is interesting enough to host on Wikisource even without editorial control. —CalendulaAsteraceae (talk • contribs) 17:59, 17 January 2024 (UTC)


 * I'm inclined to say that, while https://tomlehrersongs.com and its contents are self-published and thus (in my opinion) this edition is technically not in scope per WS:WWI, nevertheless the works themselves are in scope, so in the absence of a better edition I think we can treat it like an online songbook as you say.
 * In this case, we should treat the works which come in multiple parts exactly the way the website does. Which, it appears, is to include them on the same page. However, looking at the downloaded scan, it looks like these additions are not in it? —Beleg Tâl (talk) 18:15, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Beleg Tâl: Index:Tom Lehrer song lyrics (website).pdf was put together by proofreaders for convenience; the original files were all separate PDFs. I'm not surprised the compiler missed a few files. —CalendulaAsteraceae (talk • contribs) 21:23, 17 January 2024 (UTC)