Making CDR's or buying Disconforme titles..

[wolff]

Just thought I'd mention a couple things that have been bugging me a bit in the area of reissues, making CDR's and Public Domain labels. Just my personal opinion, based on what I've learned and how I feel about it.

Disconforme, and it's imprints, continue to reissue and sell, in the USA: Blue Note performances, Mosaic copy sets, etc.. These are CDRs of vinyl or previously reissued CDs. They pay no licening fees or royalties.

As far as I'm concerned, these reissues are no better or more legit than than CDRs made by myself.

The praise and support these PD labels get continues to baffle me. They are doing nothing more than making CDRs of these performances, sourced from BN and Mosaic CDs of the past.

I would rather send you a CDR of my Mulligan/Baker Mosaic than have you buy Disconforme's version.

[RDK]

Agreed. Much food for thought. But i think it's up to each of us to decide where the moral/ethical line is. What gets me is, as you allude to, the hypocrisy of supporting these labels while denouncing the trading of oop material via CDRs. That said - and despite what many jazz fans might say in public - I know very few who don't, if only occassionally, swap CDRs.

[neveronfriday]

CDRs?

Disconforme?

Never heard of them.

Are they good?

Do they swing?

[wolff]

Check out this PD development posted on another board. A couple companies, one in the USA, getting to together to make CDR's and import them to USA. If anyone can give me the step by step legalities of this, I'd appreciate it.

Ever wonder why record companies don't ask you what you want? Well, now they do! Eric Records will soon begin importing exclusive releases from an exciting new label in England specializing in hard-to-find favorites from the mid-1950's and earlier. But the good part is, we want YOU to tell US what you want on these CD's - which artists, what songs, even how you'd like them thematically organized!

Let's say you've always wanted an album of rare songs by Patti Page. Or, how about a disc with your favorite Louis Jordan jump 'n' jive? Or, would you dig a sh-boomin' collection of Crew Cuts? Or, a compendium of old-time, country Christmas classics by Tex Ritter?

It's your pick! These moderately-priced CD's will have up to 30 songs each - songs that you can help choose! Just remember, these tracks must have been recorded before 1956. To give us your suggestions, email sales@ericrecords.com.

Or, if you want to get intimately involved in the selection process - and perhaps receive a consulting fee - please contact Bill Buster, owner of Eric Records, by e-mail and tell him how much you know about music before 1956 and why you'd like to assist with these new releases. If you're an enthusiastic vintage music expert, we need your help!

Thanks for supporting Eric Records, an independent label dedicated to the music you love!

Bill Buster, President

Eric Records

"Music Worth Remembering"

[Dan Gould]

I believe the simple answer is that these CDRs could be sold legally in Europe, but the import and sale of these recordings, still copyrighted in the US, would be illegal.

On the other hand, places like Dusty Groove and Cadence have no trouble importing and re-selling Lonehill and other rip-off labels, so who knows?

[David Ayers]

I believe the simple answer is that these CDRs could be sold legally in Europe, but the import and sale of these recordings, still copyrighted in the US, would be illegal.

On the other hand, places like Dusty Groove and Cadence have no trouble importing and re-selling Lonehill and other rip-off labels, so who knows?

←

However compositions remain in copyright even when the actual sound recording does not. Royalties are owed to credited composers (who only lose copyright a fixed period after they die - if then). I wonder whether these composer royalties are paid by disconforme etc.? My impression is yes, but I could be wrong. CD-R copying also denies the music publisher (and therefore the composer or composition owner) revenue, as well as the owner of copyright in the sound recording (who *may* be paying a royalty to, at most, the session leader). On this board we emphasise the question of performer royalty a lot, but composer royalties are in general more financially significant. And don't forget that that the owner of the sound recording is likely to be taking *much* more from the deal than the performer in relation to these historic recordings.

[neveronfriday]

We really should collect all these whining-about-European-reissue-labels (legal or not, fact or fiction, and whatever...) posts and put them all into one single thread. It'd be a couple of miles long, but it would certainly be helpful to remind us that every single argument etc. has been talked to death here already.

[wolff]

I wonder whether these composer royalties are paid by disconforme etc.? My impression is yes, but I could be wrong.

←

I'll beleive it when I see it.

Edited July 13, 2005 by wolff

[neveronfriday]

published in 2004:

Elvis has left the building - time to free his works too

   

Isn't 50 years of copyright enough? By Becky Hogge

After 50 years we should be free to copy Elvis

The international recording industry is preparing to lobby the EU for changes to existing copyright law. But in an attempt to manipulate law for profit, we are being asked to place whole chunks of our culture into a commercial vacuum.

Twenty-seven years after his death, Elvis Presley is still climbing the charts. The track that is credited with giving birth to rock and roll, That's All Right, reached number three last month, fifty years after it was first recorded in Memphis ' Sun Studios.

For most record buyers the track was just a nostalgic trip. But to record industry officials it is a “call to arms”. For on 1 January 2005, this seminal recording will drop out of copyright and into the public domain.

Under current EU law, sound recordings are classified as “performance” and copyrighted for a period of 50 years. This is not to be confused with compositions, which remain in copyright for the artist's lifetime plus 70 years, preventing others from covering or sampling the track without paying some royalties.

Nevertheless what this law does mean is that, from January, anyone may store, share, swap or commercially release That's All Right without recourse to RCA, who currently own rights to the track as part of their back catalogue. Further, over the next decade and beyond, other such seminal recordings - from Chuck Berry to Johnny Cash and, eventually, The Beatles - will come into the public domain.

Faced for the first time with losing significant back catalogue profits, the industry is lobbying to change the law. The industry describes the law as a “loophole”. In fact it is anything but.

For every one recording that has the power to reach number three in the commercial charts fifty years after its original release, there are hundreds if not thousands of tracks that do not.

Although these recordings no longer have any commercial value to their rights holders, they are of tremendous value in terms of our cultural heritage. But the mechanisms of copyright law mean that, should the European Parliament choose to heed the music industry, keeping Elvis out of the public domain for a further 45 years or even more, the King will drag down with him this huge body of commercially worthless but culturally significant work.

Works of no commercial value will be orphaned, languishing in forgotten store cupboards at record company headquarters when they could be enjoying a digital rebirth in the public domain.

Brewster Kahle is head of the Internet Archive, an American organisation which aims to store a digital record of every web page, TV broadcast, radio program, book, song, film - every product of human culture they can lay their hands on - in a high-profile project likened to the building of the ancient library at Alexandria.

His team are currently digitising 500,000 old 78s to add to the library. In a recent appearance in the UK at the technology conference NotCon, Kahle urged attendees to safeguard the EU performance copyright law.

“A couple of these tracks may be of commercial value,” says Kahle, but in leaving sound recordings under copyright, “we are taking away all of early 20th century culture from our use. We will subject our children and grandchildren to only listening to the current pop hits and not being able to learn from the past.”

The advantages of digital archives are clear. Not only is it possible to store far greater volumes of information digitally than in “hard copy”, but unlike the ancient library at Alexandria, digital libraries are less likely to burn to the ground.

If the freedom of a society is defined by its access to information, then libraries play a central role in democracy. When pumped-up copyright laws start undermining the ability of these new digital libraries to function, then, as we move further into the digital age, question marks may start to appear over the shape of free speech.

Indeed Kahle is presently suing US Attorney General John Ashcroft under the claim that modern copyright law runs in breach of the US First Amendment right to free speech.

He also argues that extending copyright terms across the board, without demanding whether the original authors actually value the copyright anymore through some kind of registration system, effectively traps the majority of works – those not commercially viable for re-release yet not allowed into the public domain.

The public domain isn't just a repository for our cultural heritage - its richness provides inspirational material which in turn leads artists to create new works. Where would Disney be without the success of translating age-old fairy tales like Cinderella and Snow White into the captivating new format of animation?

Yet the US 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) was arguably a direct result of the Disney Corporation's lobbying of Congress to protect Mickey Mouse from falling into the public domain on his 75th birthday in 2003.

“By repetitively extending copyright, the question that comes up is: will this ever stop?” asks Kahle. “The authors of the last copyright extension in the United States … publicly stated that they were interested in copyright lasting 'one day short of eternity'. This statement seems consistent with the strategy that is unfolding among American lobbies.”

Copyright law was originally framed with this in mind; that individual artists should be able to create works and have those works as their exclusive property was the incentive for artists to keep on creating. Yet even Elvis himself owes a great debt to early black rhythm and blues musicians who contributed to his unique style.

Since copyright law was originally framed, industries like the record industry which publish creative works have grown and merged to become global mega-corps. Yet despite their size, the internet, with its unbridled ability to disseminate a wide range of cultural products at zero cost, presents a huge threat to these industries.

Copyright law is their only weapon against the new technology of the internet, but they have the muscle to use it to great effect. When the printing press first enabled the distribution of bibles to the masses, the incumbent authority at the time – the religious establishment – was also “called to arms”.

If we allow incumbent publishing industries to stunt the growth of the internet and secure their future profits by manipulating copyright law and waging assaults on the public domain, who knows what cultural renaissance we may be missing out on?

The shift away from the public domain towards copyright perpetuity should be the public's “call to arms”. Says Kahle: “Everything we do is built on the past. If we effectively take the past away from us, then we're living in a perpetual present. This is only a world George Orwell might smirk at.”

[Guy Berger]

The shift away from the public domain towards copyright perpetuity should be the public's “call to arms”. Says Kahle: “Everything we do is built on the past. If we effectively take the past away from us, then we're living in a perpetual present. This is only a world George Orwell might smirk at.”

I agree -- this would be an outrage.

Guy

[mikeweil]

I think the main problem is the number of copies a label needs to sell to break even - the larger the company, the larger the number they have to sell. Printing 2000 copies of some rare jazz CD nothing but reduces their total profit, and raises their image with the elusive minority that we jazz collectors are.

[clifford_thornton]

Disconforme is an odd label - I remember when the Tippett, Collier and Auger stuff came out, supposedly authorized - then they didn't pay out the artists and the CDs were pulled off the shelves.

They didn't do a half-bad job of mastering, though I believe that "Deep Dark Blue Centre" is from an LP rather than source tape.