Re: [ARSCLIST] ^ Letter on British Copyright Term Extension

[steven c <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Karl Miller" <lyaa071@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> On Tue, 12 Sep 2006, steven c wrote:
>
> > Except (and this was my point...) that the copyrights on the sound
> > recordings
> > of this "old music" AREN'T held by their creators (in the sense of
> > artists)...
> > nor do those people receive any income from them! Copyrights in sound
> > recordings are held by the companies who made the recordings, since
> > they are legally considered "works for hire" and very few of the
artists'
> > contracts called for royalties on record sales.
> >
> > Further, the companies that hold the copyrights have so far shown
minimal
> > interest in making any but a select few available, citing as an excuse,
"We
> > can't make any money on them!" All well and good...but they can also
legally
> > bar anyone else from making them available on the grounds of "copyright
> > infringement."
>
> Which reminds me of the fact that the record companies are once again
> making fools out of the artists. They have convinced artists that rights
> need to be protected in perpetuity...however, the rub comes from the fact
> that the artist usually gives the label exclusive rights to
> the use that copyrighted recording...or the company owns the
> copyright...so, it is up to the company to decide if your
> recording is going to be available or not. Sure you may own the recipe for
> your salad dressing,  but if nobody is going to bottle it and nobody is
> going to put it on the shelf, you don't make any money.
>
> Karl (who puts a clause in each of his contracts which has the full rights
> revert to the artist should their product not be made available by my
> label)
>
First...agreed! IIRC, a few of the artists involved actually managed to
acquire the rights to their own masters when Majestic suddenly and
probably unexpectedly went to that "great record shop in the sky" in
early 1948. As a result, they were able to lease the masters, mainly
to Mercury, and make money on the deal.

Second, record companies have been making fools out of recording
artists for a number of years...and artists usually let them simply
because of the ego reinforcement involved in saying "My new record
(album, CD, box set, usw...) is so great! However, the one-sided
nature of early recording was simply because musicians had always
been paid $X at the end of a gig, and assumed that a recording
session was simply another gig. It took several decades for
musicians (or their union) to notice that they got a lump sum,
while the Acme Record Company kept making money on the record
as long as somebody bought the dommed thing!

And now we have the internet to further complicate things...

Steven C. Barr