Non-porn movies have this too

We're still lucky not to have FBI warning jingles at the start of every music CD.

To keep beating the poor dead horse: inside USA or outside USA is rather moot with the internet. Legal, illegal...no way to enforce. I've seen BN PD recordings at Tower in the USA!! Hell, the Cuban embargo has little effect on cigar smokers in the USA.

One question I do have regarding public domain recordings/albums is the cover art and liner notes. Can the EU PD companies duplicate it after 50 years?

I agree. Stupid AND ugly.

No, the copyright has only expired on the recorded performance, not the other copyrighted works (compositions, artwork, text), where the duration is longer (same as for all artistic and literary works)

Well, that's good. DSM, Reid Miles, Nat Hentoff and Leanard Feather can rest easy.

I hope you guys that do the spin-off BN covers here are copyrighting them.
Or, you could approach the PD companies with your ideas.

Right, Amazon and Tower online site have all the Blue Moon, Definitive, JSP titles you could want. I walked into the local Tower the other day, and they had all the Proper Boxes lined up in a row!

But it gets worse (or better if you are looking for cheap music), there are now a couple of Russian websites that sell mp3s. Apparently (and I don't really know the law here), Russia does not recognize any copyrights prior to around 1973, and in general they have sweetheart deals for the material published after that (I guess the music labels were trying to get even 10 cents on the dollar in Russia). So now these companies are selling what are perfectly legal MP3s in Russia, but are quite illegal in other parts of the world. Needlesstosay, it is no sweat to buy these MP3s from anywhere in the world. The prices are ridiculously low, generally 50 cents to $1 for an entire album. (How do I know this? Hmm. I was just doing research on the topic, just like Pete T. )

Ya know, I actually thought about doing it. That's how annoying I find those things. It's like a desecration to me, esp. the back of the BN cds.

We will have to see how it all works out.
My knee jerk response is the tapes will have little if any monetary value, to whomever owns them now. Especially, if they continue to ignore the situation.

I doubt a government conservatory organization will want the expense of storing.

Maybe, a few private organizations will step up. I could see Paul Allen possibly
wanting them.

I wonder if Michael Cuscuna has any thoughts on the issue. He's been their caretaker for years.

I'm curious as to what you suggest they do since they are "ignoring the situation." What's wrong with stuff going into the public domain? Would you rather the record companies convince Congress to extend copyrights for another 100 years? What good would that do?

You can be sure that if it was about Disney movies, the US would already have introduced such a protection.

An interesting article on the subject can be found here (check the "COPYRIGHT IN REMASTERED SOUND RECORDINGS" section):

http://www.btinternet.com/~tony.kent/soundrec.htm

Forgive me in advance for writing this, because others have been saying this too, so it will be stuff many of you have heard before. But....

I don't think the problem lies with the music itself going into the public domain. That can be good because (in theory at least) it can become more available and not "owned" by any one entity. Perhaps we then will not have to wait for things to be re-issued (or never issued) by the original copyright holder.

But, the problem that I see is that having things go into the public domain eliminates corporations from having economic incentives to protect the original recordings. Right now, Blue Note, Fantasy, Columbia and others all have an economic incentive to properly store the master tapes to the classic albums we all love. Since they will no longer own the right to make $$$ off of these after the music goes into the public domain, and since there will be tons of digital copies widely available for people to make copies from, the original tapes will not hold any significant value.

I don't know the solution, but I think we need to be open to ideas. Put them in the Smithsonian for all I care.

Add me to the list of people who firmly believe that original tapes matter. I'm not an engineer, so I'll leave that to others on the board who have expressed the audio science far better than I can. I just know what I hear, and the comparison between even re-issued Lps and the CDs of the same material make me want to do all I can to preserve the original recordings.

If you lose the rights to something it becomes worthless. The Blue Note, Prestige, Riverside, etc. catalogs will soon be of no value to those who own them. Worse case, original tapes, album art and liner notes become worthless and end up in the trash.

Many other negative results that vastly overshadow the short term gains made by consumers and PD labels.

You'd think so, but it does not seem like it. They are loosing shelf space at this very moment and it will get geometrically worse , FAST.

I've asked a similar question of Tom Evered at AAJ, but he has not answered questions in weeks.

Do a search for public domain. Chuck Nessa and JSngry and others have discussed this before.

IMO if you think long term(or just medium term) this is the most disastrous, destructive event I can imagine.

Think about the Concord label that just bought(I think) the Fantasy catalog. I am at an utter and complete loss as to why they bought it. Prestige/New Jazz, Riverside, Fantasy, Contemporary, etc. titles are all PD in no time. It's like trading for a baseball player that becomes a free agent at the end of the year.

I hope I'm wrong, but until I see the owners of the recordings doing something I have little hope this situation will turn around.

The new material is probably copyrightable (if it hadn't been issued at all), and the arrangement of tracks, new liner notes, etc. should be copyrightable. But there seems to be nothing to stop a label from going and recreating the original album and issuing it. Many European labels have already started issuing BN or Columbia "master takes" from particular artists. I have even seen a Clifford Brown complete Vogue master takes that looks very tempting, given how difficult it is to find the original Vogue albums.

Anyway, Concord does have an arrangement with Emusic, and perhaps will extend/expand it. Maybe they will just try to sell their back catalogue electronically and not compete with the physical product put out by Definitive and Blue Moon.

Hmm, I just thought of an interesting point. Once the material goes PD, will the labels stop paying any royalties (those that are still obligated to do so)? Then BN, Verve, Impulse, whomever, could compete with with the European labels. But of course, the rights do last a lot longer in the US than in Europe.

Good points, but what is to stop an EU Emusic company from doing the same thing? Boundaries mean little regarding this issue, both for sale of hard copies and E copies.

Great link, Claude! This section answers (or at least tries to answer) some of the very questions asked here in this thread...

Today there are dedicated individuals involved in the restoration and remastering of public domain material from both the popular and classical recorded repertoire. Sophisticated audio restoration equipment and software now exist that can work near-miracles in removing the result of years of wear and tear to the original disc copies.

The question is often asked whether a new copyright can arise in a restored or remastered version of a sound recording which is now in the public domain.

Since the CDPA clearly states that no copyright can subsist in a sound recording which "is (or to the extent that it is) a copy taking from a previous sound recording", it means that copyright can subsist only in the original master, and not in any copy (such as a pressing) made directly (or indirectly) from that master. Because of this, many legal commentators are of the opinion that no new copyright can arise in any re-recording once the original copyright has expired.

This may well be the case if the re-recording is merely a slavish transfer. But what if time and skill is expended, utilising the facilities of modern computer technology? Might the results justify a new copyright claim in respect of the restored material?

It is debatable as to whether merely removing "clicks and crackle" from an old record would qualify, as these artifacts are not usually part of the original recording but are most likely the result of manufacturing defects and/or subsequent wear and tear. It is possible, however, that the creative use of equalisation or special effects (such as reverberation or pseudo-stereo) in the audio chain to improve or embellish an original recording might well be sufficient to establish a new copyright in such a version.

In a recent copyright-related U.S. legal case, a British photographic agency, owner of a substantial library of photographic images of artistic works in the public domain, brought a breach of copyright action against a company who were reproducing some of these same images, without consent, for sale on a CD-ROM. In a controversial decision it was held that there was no breach of copyright, since the photographic images were mere slavish copies of works that were in the public domain (seemingly regardless of any skill involved in the making of those photographic copies).

On the other hand, the U.S. Copyright Office has publicly accepted that there can be a new copyright in a "colorised" version of a black and white movie.

Currently there is evidence that some commercial re-issues of restored public domain sound recordings are being openly pirated, perhaps on the assumption that no copyright can exist in these copies. The validity of such an assumption has yet to be tested in the courts.

From searching this site for this issue I noticed plenty of disagreement.

Help me out here.

How could this work, or how would it have been working if, for example, Blue Note Records was located in France rather than the USA?

Besides that, what is this statement implying? Music and it's distribution should not be a commercial enterprise? What is cultural heritage? Is Miles Davis' KOB cultural heritage? I'm drowning here.

I guess I am having trouble understanding your point. Music is still very much a commercial enterprise but the exclusive rights to issue and license are limited to 50 years in the EU and 95 years in the US. There is no question that the lack of harmonization is going to screw with US music companies, but frankly I have trouble believing that a music company would sign and record an artist with the 95 year window but not with the 50 year window. Some people would say that is more than enough time. Most musical product has a shelf life of 3 or 4 years. Regarding the music from the 1950s, none of those business decisions were made with the 95 year window in mind, since that was applied retroactively by our friend Sonny Bono (a practice that I strongly object to).

I suppose it comes down to a philosophical belief about the nature of the public domain. Do you want a strong public domain, or do you value individual property rights more? I prefer more material to be in the public domain. I also come at this from an academic perspective where our basic belief is that information should be as free as possible. Professors write journal articles with no direct compensation (and sometimes even have to pay to have the article accepted for review even in the reputable journals). None of us really expect to make royalties off academic books. The copyleft movement is starting to pick up steam. And so forth. Being entrenched in this system, I am more attuned to the benefits that will accrue from allowing music into the public domain (more interesting hip hop samples and mash-ups if nothing else). But of course there are drawbacks as well, it just isn't what I focus on.