Re: [ARSCLIST] Brunswick Records rights/Universal

[David Lennick <dlennick@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mike Richter wrote:

> steven c wrote:
>
> > Not being a lawyer, I can't say for sure...but I suspect it was because
> > the recordings were originally cut in the UK, and if over 50 years old
> > were p.d. in that country. I don't know enough about international
> > copyright law to say whether or not that makes them p.d. in the US
> > as well...but, as I understand it, the basis for the suit was that
> > EMI had reissued the same material (taken from recordings in their
> > own archive)...?
>
> Per the CLIR paper, whether the recording is PD in its country of origin
> is not altogether irrelevant, but copyright may be restored (which
> appears to be a passive verb in this case) even if it does not apply
> where created, published, or darn near anything else.
>
> I strongly urge anyone addressing these questions to spend some time
> with CLIR 135; it may be depressing, but it comes close to mandatory
> reading - and it is nearly readable by mere human beings!
>
> Mike
> --
> mrichter@xxxxxxx
> http://www.mrichter.com/

I know we bring up music copyrights and "they aren't the same thing", but
there's a similar set of circumstances that reverses the situation in Canada.
Songs published in the US before 1924 are public domain in that country,
period. In Canada it's "death plus 50", so all those Irving Berlin songs
published between 1907 and 1924 that are free in the States are copyrighted in
Canada till 50 years from Berlin's death....2039 (or maybe 2040 if we have to
add the year of death). But anything by Gershwin that doesn't have a
collaborator (or credited orchestrator) has been PD in Canada since 1988.

dl (who may yet have to go back to being a disc jockey if all the countries go
for copyright extensions)