For personal use, it is not a bootleg.
But if you make it available for others, then it becomes a bootleg.
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Is such a usage common on MB?
I have not heard digital rips of LPs that are offered as torrents being described as “bootlegs”.
It’s a common meaning of the term, at least according to Wiktionary:
v. (2) (transitive) to make, transport and/or sell an illegal version or copy of a copyrighted product
n. (2) An illegally produced, transported or sold product; contraband
a. (1) illegally produced, transported or sold; pirated
There is are a few other meanings, clearly not relevant here (we’re clearly not talking about actual boots, liquor, or American football), but there is one more relevant meaning:
n. (3) (music) A remix or mashup that is a combination of two songs but that is authorized and audited for copyright use; prevalent in the electronic music scene
but we’d call that an “official” release here, since it’s sanctioned by the artist or label.
BTW: Maybe we should split up “bootleg” into multiple categories, but at some point it seems we’d just be making moral judgements—I suspect there is a large agreement that e.g., posting a clip of a concert you went to on YouTube is OK, or that trading of live recording where the band was OK with it isn’t a problem either. And that attempting to claim someone else’s music as your own and sell it on iTunes is not OK. Maybe those should be split.
But ultimately MB is supposed to be an archive of music metadata; largely, I think, we deal in facts, without expressing an opinion on them. We currently use “bootleg” to express a fact, that a release was not authorized by the artist or label. But if that’s OK or not is an opinion which, once you’re out of a few easy cases, many people will disagree on. That’s not something the normal editing process would work for at all. (It is something you could use tags for, though.)
Listing a release does not mean we endorse it. It merely means we think it exists (or existed).
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That
That seems a very broad definition that ignores common usage when the product is recorded music.
Around recorded music “bootleg” seems, in my experience, to always be a contraction of “bootleg recording”.
The unauthorised discography mp3 compilation CDs, say of all an artist’s releases, sold on the street in Thailand aren’t referred to as “bootleg” to my knowledge.
“Pirated” is the common term that I’m familiar with.
The more MusicBrainz makes common words with accepted meaning into jargon with non-common meanings the more difficult it is for new encyclopedia users to understand.
I can also see that sometimes the trade-off between “ease of use for naive users” and “amount of time required to change database to give little added benefit” will result in more MB specific jargon being created.
I hate to be “that guy”, but some of this comes down to the noun, verb, or adjective usage.
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VRS Acoustics - 88078 - Nellie Melba by Digital Transfer by Tim Ecker
Is the above properly called a bootleg?
Or is it not a bootleg because copyright has returned to the public domain?
Will the BeeGees ripoff “release” cease to be a “bootleg” when its copyright returns to the public domain?
Would the “Nellie Melba by Digital Transfer by Tim Ecker” commonly be called a bootleg or would terms like rip or digital transfer be the existing language commonly used to categorise the recording and communicate about its provenance?
If “Nellie Melba by Digital Transfer by Tim Ecker” is not a “bootleg” on MB then what is it?
It’s not official.
What about this hypothetical one on The Pirate Bay?
Elton John The Ultimate Best Of Elton John CD 2014 (download torrent) - TPB
Are unauthorised bit-torrents of recorded music called “bootleg”?
My understanding is that they are described as “piracy”.
And that in the field of recorded music “bootleg” has a common, widely understood meaning that is separate and distinct from “piracy” and that “bootleg” is not recognised to mean “v. (2) (transitive) to make, transport and/or sell an illegal version or copy of a copyrighted product” in the field of recorded music.
Pressing “bootleg” into duty as a copyright categoriser has the effect of creating confusion around the copyright status of pre-?1976? unauthorised recordings where copyright was held by the recordist and hence these earlier bootlegs are not breaching the performer’s copyright. (AIUI)
AIUI
Currently on MB:
Bootleg = “bootleg recording” with no implication about copyright breaches.
Proposed:
Bootleg = “bootleg recording” with no implication about copyright breaches.
PLUS
Bootleg = an illegal version or copy of a copyrighted product.
This looks like a significant degradation of important data to me.
Currently the recordings of an artist can be divided into authorised and unauthorised.
With “bootleg” containing the unauthorised.
If “Bootleg = “bootleg recording” with no claimed copyright breach. PLUS Bootleg = an illegal version or copy of a copyrighted product.”, is used then the “unauthorised recordings” and the pirated authorised recordings will be mixed under one heading.
The public domain one — it probably shouldn’t be called bootleg, but indeed the definition on the MB page says it is. Could change it to be authorized by the artist, the label, or the law in the country it was released.
The BeeGees — I’m not entirely sure how we handle releases who’s status change, but I’d think in this case we record the status as of when it was released. So current ones wouldn’t change, but future ones might not be considered bootlegs.
The piratebay disc is (I’m guessing here, since I haven’t downloaded it, and it’s 404 so I can’t even check the description) a rip of an official release. I don’t think we add a separate release for that.
I agree with you that it’d be nice to have better terms. (First thing that comes to mind is “unauthorized”, but I bet that’ll be a different can o’ worms).
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You are right.
https://musicbrainz.org/doc/Release
“bootleg
An unofficial/underground release that was not sanctioned by the artist and/or the record company. This includes unofficial live recordings and pirated releases.”
My “Currently on MB:” and “Proposed” above need to be interchanged.
I still think conflating “pirated” and “bootleg” degrades data and confuses users.
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So shall we recommend changing ‘bootleg’ to ‘unofficial’? Would that help?
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Honestly, so long as recordings are different than tracks and songs are only one type of work, people are going to have to learn our particular uses of existing terminology anyway; I’ve personally felt that our use of “bootleg” is actually one of the more natural definitions on here, even if it might be slightly expanded from its usual application. That said, I’m not particularly attached to it either, and the only concern I’d have over changing it to “unofficial” is that it becomes a lot harder to tell apart from “official” at a glance.
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As I see natural language allows new encyclopedia users and new editors to understand and engage with Musicbrainz with the most ease.
Natural language also functions to re-assure new users that MB is user-friendly - familiar terms being used in everyday ways say “This ain’t that hard”.
Every usage of jargon or uncommon meaning forms a barrier to easy use and steepens the learning curve.
And makes the environment more foreign and challenging.
Those of you who like graphs might want to consider how “perceived user friendliness” against “number of jargon terms” might look. I think we are looking at a sort of exponential graph where more than a small number of jargon terms produces a very large decrease in “perceived user friendliness”.
Sometimes the benefits of more jargon or additional uncommon usage can be argued to outweigh the costs. Metadata is weird stuff and so some weirdness is probably necessary. Though the cumulative effect on “perceived user friendliness” needs to be kept in mind.
“Bootleg” - nice familiar term to those who are into music recordings.
Here on MB it is being used close to it’s original music recording meaning “Live Bootleg”.
It’s bit twisted but probably familiar enough.
But then “Bootleg” is also being used for digital transfers of old, public domain recording. Which probably seems bizarre, foreign, suggestive of a challenging, trap-filled environment, that is less likely to be user friendly, in the eyes of a naive user of MB.
I’m thinking,
""unauthorized
An unofficial/underground release that was not sanctioned by the copyright holder. This includes unofficial live recordings (bootleg recordings) and pirated releases. (Does not apply to releases in the public domain.) "
All natural language which will give no cause for concern or alarm the unsuspecting passerby … 
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I agree with most of that, but not with making an exception for public domain works. My concerns:
- Maybe I’m in the minority, and maybe I’m misremembering how I thought of things before I came here, but I don’t think I thought of “bootleg” as “illegal”, but rather as “someone else’s copy”. Yeah it becomes legal when it enters public domain, but it’s still being put out by someone who has no connection to the original artists or label, it’s still relying on knowing copyright laws that vary based on where the release occurred, and it’s still making the definition all the more complex.
- If we make an exception for public domain, then we also need an exception for Creative Commons and other free-as-in-speach licenses.
- Surely, just because it’s legal to do so, some third party’s (single-artist) compilation or someone’s home music video don’t become “official” just because they’re perfectly legal? (Ignore the fact that the latter would be a standalone recording and wouldn’t have a status.) If we’re trying to maximize natural language, I’d find it a lot more confusing that something could be “official” without a word of input by the original artists/label than it would be that something could be both legal and a “bootleg”.
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Not really—if you put your work under a creative commons license, then you are authorizing others to copy, modify (unless -ND), and sell (unless -NC) as long as they follow the license terms. So if they do follow the terms, that’s not a bootleg, because it’s authorized by the artist.
I get what you’re saying—it’s weird to consider things like that official. But it’d also be weird to consider https://musicbrainz.org/release/69f8697a-fbd4-40e8-bed3-b0f558eec64a a bootleg. But that’s a bunch of public domain recordings, put out by people who have no relation to the original artists.
If we consider using public domain material as bootlegging, there is are a lot of classical recordings from before the 50s or 60s or so that have entered the public domain and are put out on CDs by major labels. Those all become bootlegs. (And depending on what we mean by the “the artist”, I’m pretty sure neither Mozart nor his publishers approved of any of the recordings in MB, his works being in the public domain since before recorded music existed.)
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My turn to say “I see what you’re getting at, but…” it’s also possible for someone to explicitly release their work to the public domain rather than waiting for the copyright to expire, and at that point the biggest difference between doing so and releasing something under restriction-free CC is that the latter’s a bit wordier. I’m not saying that’s an argument either way, just that if we mention “public domain” in a definition somewhere, it should be accompanied by something like “or a similar free license”.
That is a good point. I was primarily thinking of collecting together singles as a sort of unofficial, digital “box set”, but if all the recordings are free-use, then it’s easy enough to bypass existing albums and create a new release. Still, I do feel that repackaging a public domain album and re-releasing it as close to the original as the new medium allows is a bootleg despite what the law says about it. Maybe make some distinction based on originality?
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Good to see that others are aware of the problem with my version of “unauthorised by copyright holder”.
That being that AIUI prior tp ?1976? the recordist (bootleg recording maker) held the copyright. (Or at least was the primary copyright holder.)
Derobert pointed towards a problem with the current definition:
""bootleg
An unofficial/underground release that was not sanctioned by the artist and/or the record company. This includes unofficial live recordings and pirated releases."
To make that problem explicit:
The artist may very well not have authority to sanction a release.
The record company only has authority to sanction a release if they hold the copyright.
The only entity with authority to sanction a release seems to be the copyright holder/s. Which may not be a record company or the artist/s.
This is why I suggest “authorised” because we can be said, as members of the public, to be “authorised” to use public domain material. Yes it is a bit of a stretch - I suppose legal, permitted, allowed, or lawful would read be friendlier.
It looks to me like we are trying to capture metadata about copyright status.
How about we do that explicitly and separately?
And leave “bootleg recording”/“live bootleg” just as a type of unauthorised recording?
So we’d get something like (with slashes being “I’m not sure what the best term is”):
- (blank)
- Authorized
- Official / Commercial
- Promotional
- Free culture & Public domain (not “Creative Commons”—see below)
- Unauthorized
- Live bootleg / bootleg recording
- Mixtape
- Pirate
- Pseudo Release
(“Creative Commons” is a trademark so we probably don’t want to use that to describe releases that aren’t under a CC license. Though with our own promotion of CC, maybe it should be a separate category.)
A lot of “mixtapes” are “authorized” (using the above terminology) though, so this would be confusing.
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Perhaps something like “homebrew” would work better in that case? Granted, that term might intersect with “pirate” in some cases 
I think this should not be a separate category. Released under free licenses can also be “Official / Commercial”. I have bought a couple of releases that qualify for it. I rather think licensing is something different from the release status.
In the end anything with open licenses must be authorized (since you can’t grant a license on something you don’t own), but such licensed releases can still be categorized as Official, Commercial or Promotional