Re: [ARSCLIST] Donation/purchase of the pre-1942 sound recordings (Wikipedia)

[David Seubert <seubert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I too have been following the discussion of how to spend the $100M. 
While I'd love to see it spent on freeing early sound recordings from 
perpetual copyright, the smartest arguments I've read are to try to 
change copyright law by spending the $100M on lawyers, lobbyists, and 
funding the campaign of Orrin Hatch's next Senate opponent.

David Seubert
UCSB

Jon Noring wrote:
> Interestingly, the Wikipedia folk have been approached by someone
> who says they have access to $100 million to possibly purchase the
> rights to copyrighted works to release to the Public Domain. Of
> course, on Wikipedia-L I've made what I think is a strong case to
> approach Sony BMG with an offer. Some sort of offer, plus other perks
> and the right architecture of the deal to allow Sony BMG to write off
> even more, plus the positive PR that will result, may be what is
> needed to free the majority of the pre-1942 material. Universal may
> also be approached similarly. Sony BMG + Universal should cover at
> least 90% of all the pre-1942 U.S. commercial recordings (just a
> wild guess, but we are talking about Victor, Columbia/Okeh, ARC,
> Brunswick/Vocalion, and Decca/Gennett. The only other major not in]
> this picture is Edison.)
>
> Refer to the archives of wikipedia-l for my messages on this topic.
> If anyone here is interested in this, maybe we can make the proposal
> even stronger. Let me know in private.
>
> Jon Noring