Re: [ARSCLIST] Brunswick Records rights/Universal

[steven c <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "James L Wolf" <jwol@xxxxxxx>
> Yes, the 1923 date is the US public-domian cutoff for all published
material except for sound recordings. Which means the "underlying works" of
any pre-23 recording are automatically public domain, whereas the recordings
themselves won't be until 2067. Unless there's another extension. Because
Disney isn't just going to let Mickey go PD in 2023 or something, right?
>
> Europeans don't need to care about this, of course, though there are
rumblings about taking recordings out of public domain over there, or at
least extending the 50 years of recorded sound copyright to something much
more American. Elvis is threatened, you know.
>
> But since I'm a person who works at a US government institution with a
tremendous collection of pre 1923 recordings, and who would like to help put
as many as possible of these recordings onto the web so that the history
isn't lost, I hope you understand the enormous frustration I and others in
similar situations feel. The issue of recordings copyright is truly central
to the entire field of recordings preservation in the US, and is getting
more worrisome as time goes on and more very early recordings dissapear
and/or deteriorate.
>
> There is some cause for hope. Archeophone records, based in Illinois,
decided at some point not to care about the state laws that cover pre-72
recordings, and have declared all the contents of their CD reissues to be
public domain. Also, and unlike Yazoo and Revenant, they give all the
information about the source recordings. Perhaps the law in Illinois allows
them to do this. Perhaps they just have some huevos. But putting the same
material on the web presents different problems, especially for an
institution like the Library of Congress, so we have to be much more
careful.
>
Well, since I'm in Canada, all pre-1956 sound recordings are (so far)
public domain (although this is quite possible to change since we just
elected a Conservative Party federal government!). Looking at the above,
I also wouldn't have to worry about publisher or songwriter rights
if the material was published prior to 1923. I assume this would also
cover later recordings of pre-1923 songs, which are numerous...
nostalgia being what it is/was!

Of course, I suspect that, at least technically, the 2067 date would
apply to all US sound recordings, regardless of where they are being
reissued...since copyright treaties make the laws of the originating
country applicable to any countries with copyright legislation.
However, there are a lot of Canadian operations pressing and selling
reissue CD's (sometimes even in the US via the Internet!)...I don't
know if they are ignoring the treaties or if the pseudo-eternal
US copytight terms cease to apply once you drive out of this end
of the Windsor Tunnel!

One point...there seems to be a lot of confusion about the
different copyrights and terms...I've seen posts suggesting
the 1923 date applies to recordings, when Sonny Bono made
sure it DIDN'T!

Steven C. Barr