Talk:Unknown Pleasures

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There seems to be frequent abuse of Wikipedia pages about significant albums, in which non-notable critics and album reviewers (for example, Ned Raggett) namecheck themselves. The implication is that their opinion is sufficiently important to be worthy of citation in an article about a highly significant work. It would seem reasonable to require such critics to demonstrate notability before they are permitted to add their name to an article of widespread interest. Self-citation in such a context is also obviously problematic and perhaps should either not be allowed or at least transparently acknowledged as such. 84.39.112.114 (talk) 02:27, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

You have some kind of vendetta solely against Mr. Raggett, as evidenced by your entire (small) Wiki editing career being solely aimed at removing his name. It's grossly inappropriate. I do not know Mr. Raggett, and am a published music critic in my own right, and I myself added him (and other critics) to review sections, as is common and appropriate. Slandering us in terms of insinuating this material was written by Raggett instead is pathetic.Greg Fasolino (talk) 17:41, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Reply to Greg Fasolino: Nope. Wrong. No personal vendetta. I haven't heard of Raggett, except in this and too many other Wiki articles on pop albums. Whether it's Raggett himself editing, one of his cronies, or some other party with uncertain motives, it looks pretty fishy that the name keeps popping up in all of these articles. Anyways it's not that important to me personally. Too bad that the quality of the Wikipedia is dropping quickly in recent years ... And one of the problems is all the wannabe-notable article squatters. Anyways I desist ... Outta here.

Well then you're not very familiar with contemporary music journalism. Considering he is the main critic at AllMusic, which is probably the number one source of digital music criticism, it's not very surprising or "fishy" that his reviews are often cited.Greg Fasolino (talk) 20:15, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Martin Hannett – producer; synthesizer; sound effects

Mick Harnett was the producer for this album but he did not provide his musical talent on this album he merley produced it. So if you don't mind I would like to correct this. (I should know I have the original L.P. and nowhere does it mention him playing any of those instruments or any instrument at all.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:388:6080:86:D461:5C05:BB9B:325F (talk) 05:47, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

Is the cover image free?

As I sit here wearing it on my T-shirt, having just added that whole section based on the Washington Post article about the image's iconic and memetic status, and listening to the album (well ... OK, Closer and other JD work), I am coming to the realization that we can consider the cover a free image.

According to the cited Scientific American article, Craft created the plot in 1970 for his Cornell dissertation. If he did not include a copyright notice on either the image or the dissertation as a whole (and most people usually don't; I certainly didn't put a copyright notice on my master's thesis but that was later than this period), the image is in the public domain.

U.S. copyright law at that time was opt-in ... meaning affirmative notice of copyright was required in order to assert copyright as the image creator. If the original image doesn't have it (and it does not appear to from any of the images in the SA article), it is a free image by our standards and can be on Commons (there is nothing else on the cover, so nothing else to assert copyright over, and merely reversing the colors doesn't get you over the threshold of originality for Saville to claim copyright (at least in the U.S.)).

I think Craft understands this; he has never sought to block publication or reuse of the image. Neither has Saville. Its memeability no doubt owes something to that.

Anyone for moving it to Commons? Daniel Case (talk) 04:39, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

I think claiming the cover as PD is unlikely to fly - it'll be Peter Saville's copyrighted 1979 work for Factory Records based on public domain material. You could argue it wasn't, but that'd be a separate argument.

But good work in any case! We should definitely put the original plot in the article and on commons as a PD image - David Gerard (talk) 14:50, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

@David Gerard: If the cover is just a PD image on a field of black with nothing else, that makes it ineligible for US copyright. I don't know about the UK though, you're right (if you can copyright your signature there ...) Daniel Case (talk) 02:28, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

It's almost certainly not PD in the UK, where the bar for threshold of originality is much lower than the US; see Threshold of originality § UK at Commons. This logo of the word "EDGE" was ruled copyrightable in the UK because it displayed "skill, judgment, and labour". The court decision in the "Edge" logo case said "The stretching of the font was combined with the distinctive slash and projection on the middle bar of the 'E'. What is required for artistic originality is the expenditure of more than negligible or trivial effort or relevant skill in the creation of the work". For the Unknown Pleasures cover, the main aesthetic decisions are the placing and scaling of the "radio waves" image within a larger field of negative space, and the selection of color with a simple inversion. This would overcome the hurdle for "skill, judgment, and labour".

Based on my understanding (and reading of COM:DW), it's probably an open question whether the cover is PD in the US. If it is PD in the US, then it could be uploaded as PD to English Wikipedia (in high resolution), but not Commons. Works derived from PD art can be copyrightable, but it's very case-by-case. "A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications, which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a 'derivative work'." A faithful digital scan of the Mona Lisa would be PD; so would a mirrored flip of the Mona Lisa, or almost any basic geometric transformations of Mona Lisa; if you arrange the Mona Lisa within another frame next to other elements or colors, which by themselves would be PD as well, it's probably still PD but it's quickly getting into "it depends" territory—at some point, the accumulation of simple modifications could make the new work original, not just a copy or unoriginal, trivial modification of the PD art.

This got me thinking: there's also the possibility that the modifications, taken as a whole, represent "an original work of authorship" for contextual reasons, even if each modification to an underlying work is in and of itself trivial. See Transformativeness#L.H.O.O.Q.: Marcel Duchamp's few modifications of the PD Mona Lisa for L.H.O.O.Q. were trivial and minimal, but nonetheless were copyrightable because of how much they transformed the meaning of the art. It's certainly arguable that the Unknown Pleasures cover recontextualizes the PD "radio waves" image to the point of transformativeness: they took a dry, functional piece of scientific information and, with very few visual changes, remade it into an abstract artistic image evoking qualities like coldness, distance, loneliness, and alienation.

Something else: before we confidently upload Craft's "radio waves" image as PD, I think it would be preferable to track down an original copy of the dissertation itself and check the overall copyright status of the dissertation as a work. There could be a copyright notice in front matter or back matter. It's true that there are no notices on each image as shown in the page scans from the Scientific American article, but unless I'm mistaken a copyright notice at the beginning of a book published at that time could extend to all of its contents, even images that would otherwise require separate, individualized notices. According to WorldCat, there are at least three copies out there in American libraries.

Miscellaneous: there was the time Disney made a "parody" Mickey Mouse/Unknown Pleasures mashup T-shirt, but then got spooked into pulling the shirt based on the risk of copyright litigation (maybe trademark?). Finally: if it turns out that Craft's image is confirmed public domain, there are some high quality, apparently free-license vector recreations on standby: [1] (with the notice "Modify at will"), [2] (with a longer license specifying that modifications and commercial use are both OK).

Regardless of how this ultimately pans out, Daniel Case, your initial question was great and thought-provoking. I had a lot of fun thinking this through, and it would be very cool if Craft's original image turns out to be PD. —BLZ · talk 04:54, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing about its UK status. Someone should get in touch with Saville and see how he feels about it, though ... I wonder if he'd be willing to effectively release it. It would be a very Factory thing to do even after all these years.

At the time of the Disney parody, the LA Times ran an article, the one David mentioned, saying in passing that it was PD. I think it just wasn't a good look for Disney.

AFAIK, it's not really all that common to put a copyright notice on a dissertation; I don't think it was then, either. Also, the copyright may only apply to the text, not the images. Daniel Case (talk) 05:37, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

The question then is: who owns it? Factory paid Saville for his graphic design work later on (e.g. there are scans of the invoice for the sleeve for "Blue Monday") - but I'm not so clear on whether that transferred a copyright in the UK if it didn't explicitly say "this transfers the copyright" (though the record company - currently Warner Music - would have the right to use the work, having paid for it). Saville loved the Mickey Mouse shirt, and his early designs revolved largely around just taking things and reusing them. Everything about these fine details is very tangled ... - David Gerard (talk) 06:20, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

Apologies, I should clarify: when I brought up the Mickey Mouse shirt, I didn't mean to imply that Disney's decision to discontinue the shirt suggests that the material must be copyrighted, I just brought that up in passing. I had missed the LA Times article—that goes a long way!

I agree it's very unlikely that the dissertation has a formal copyright notice, but it still would be worth checking out if anyone has convenient access; it's at least possible that a university at that time would have implemented standardized copyright notices on published student work, since they would have had a high level of control over the printing/bookmaking process. Not to mention a notice hasn't been required for enforcement anyway for a long time. But idk; it's more a question of whether our default assumption should be that a work lacked a notice, or that it had a notice, and which side of that coin has to be proven/disproven to allow us to label something PD.

But maybe the question of whether Craft's dissertation is PD is irrelevant, or at least secondary. If the LA Times is right and the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy version of the image is considered PD, why not use that version? If Craft's dissertation lacks a copyright notice then his version is definitively PD, but even if he did include a notice it may be PD for other reasons, as Daniel points out. The original image is a barebones, geometric representation of recorded pulse data, it's not really any more "original" than a simple graph charting a week of temperature changes in New York, 1979. —BLZ · talk 07:01, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

(Belated reply) Perhaps I will call up Cornell (Ithaca is too far away to drive to just for this at present gas prices) and ask if they can check for a copyright notice ... I don't think it was the custom of the time to put them on dissertations, which were usually only published in the form of a couple of bound copies (if that), but I could be wrong). It might also be worth it to run down Craft, who's got to have a personal copy, and see if he can check, or formally release the rights to the image.

I really am pleased by this discussion ... I think I will take it to MCQ sooner or later and seek a broader opinion. Daniel Case (talk) 18:51, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Update: I have started the MCQ thread. Daniel Case (talk) 01:37, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

What Do Joy Plots Have TO Do With Anything?

First, The only source of people being upset by the Band Name is one random blog post from some random individual with no credentials to their name whatsoever. Secondly, What does some imaginary offense have to do with one of the greatest albums of all-time? That section is a disgrace to the band and their fantastic music. It has no reason for being included in this article. It's incredibly disrespectful to the music and the fans of the music itself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:8805:fe05:301:fd1b:9ee9:160c:6c17 (talk • contribs) 03:06, July 14, 2019 (UTC)

This is not about credentials, "imaginary offense", whether the album is great, disgracing the band (?), disrespecting the music/fans, etc. Someone coined a term, based on than band's name, for a data visualization resembling the artwork on this album's cover. How that is an assault o)n Unknown Pleasures, Joy Division, the fans and everything else right and good in the world is beyond me.

That said, the two sources cited are blogs and WP:SPS applies. I'm removing the section. If anyone finds coverage of this in reliable sources, it likely does merit mention (depending on WP:WEIGHT, of course), and this is likely the article it would be covered in. - SummerPhD^v2.0 18:33, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

Clarification: I'm fairly convinced it belongs here because the name seems to be widely used in what are certainly reliable sources. I am not adding it myself, though, because I haven't found a reliable source giving the origin. - SummerPhD^v2.0 18:47, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

"Industrial" and "Hard Rock"

FMSky, why were "industrial" and "hard rock" reverted if they didn't originate from user-generated content? Those were written by authors, not just Internet users. Misterspaceman (talk) 13:58, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

Cause these are WP:FRINGE genres, the album is widely described as post-punk --FMSky (talk) 03:26, 4 July 2024 (UTC)