Some background on Copyrights. Primarily USA, but below my info you'll find a link to the Intellectual Laws WIKI which should have a link to your state/country or whatever.
Public domain basically is the case for most songs during the classical-time-period, however... at the revolution in which music was being 'stolen' by other composers (there is a really fun chopsticks piece I am sooOOOooo tempted to post) copyrights {{
©}} were then brought into effect. If you compose a piece today and die tomorrow- fifty years from now the copyright expires... however, if you pass all of your musical materials (IE songs and their
© or even the copy rights to recordings of your songs (
℗) to your siblings or family or anyone! then the copyright may in some countries go on indefinitely or until the bloodline ends!!! I suggest you look for your answer again after reading this to further understand
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property
Fur, Moonlight and so fourth are all Public Domain. BUT... a word of warning to anyone reproducing a CD recording that is
℗... Just because the song itself is public domain, if you reproduce a recording and producers/mixers/recorders hear of it- it is very much the same as breaking a copyright. Copyrights (
©) are to musicians as Sound Recording Copyrights (
℗) are to producers/mixers/recorders. Just read through it.^^^^^^^^^
Laws may have changed and I may need to recite a few things with more current time frames... but as a full time sound designer I am 95% correct most of the time.
Jack and Jill went up a hill to fetch a pale of water... but Jill got tired of his s#%& so she shot him.
