late reply, but here goes: this is probably an 'orphan work,' i.e., a work that's still legally owned (copyrighted) by someone, but whose owner can't be located. legally, you're just required to make a 'reasonable effort' to locate the owner and ask for permission to use. if you do that and come up empty, you can go ahead and use it…
1 Apr 5, 2012 9:30 pm
Re: Buying rights to an image from a defunct company (legalese needed) (16 replies, posted in General Discussion)
2 Apr 5, 2012 9:20 pm
Re: LegalSounds is selling YOUR music for their profit! (80 replies, posted in General Discussion)
so did that Bandcamp compilation come out yet?
3 Apr 5, 2012 9:05 pm
Re: I wrote an article on chipmusic for work (70 replies, posted in General Discussion)
this is a great read 10k, pretty comprehensive.
also, i empathize with you bringing up the chiptheft issue. @DaPantz: i think it's a very interesting idea to locate the cohesion of the chiptune community partly in its resistance to chiptheft, and in its attempts to overcome it.
also, here's a link to a not-so-brief history of chiptunes by two US scholars. it's written for an academic audience, so no lazy journalism here. i'm working on something similar for a different journal myself.
http://journal.transformativeworks.org/ … view/96/94