Definitive Records... Legit label?

[kenny weir]

It's funny how people will defend labels like JSP or Chronological Classics for what they're doing - they use the 50 year EU PD rules to their advantage too - but criticize Proper and so many other labels for doing the exact same thing.

Yep.

And it can get even murkier.

Take the case of Fresh Sounds. Dodgy reissues but widely respected releases of new music, too. What do we do - boycott the reissues but buy the new stuff?

Personally, I was getting quite a few Proper boxes for review a few years back and thought they were pretty cool, but I've gone off them in a big way. Not so much for the ethical reasons as because of quality. Recently I was happy to pay quite a bit extra to get the official, complete Milton Brown on Texas Rose, sound quality amazing on a release done in conjunction with Brown's brother.

Proper has a Shorty Rogers box coming. Hmmmm ...

Folkses can rant all they like - and in general I agree - but if the source label doesn't release stuff others will. I guarantee it. Simple if sad.

[montg]

This issue has been playing out in the New York court system between Naxos and Capitol (with Capitol suing Naxos for copyright infringement--Naxos was/is remastering 78s in the public domain in the UK). Naxos won at a lower court level but I think Capitol appears to have prevailed recently in the court of appeals. This is an excerpt from a press release from a law office (Mayer, Brown, Rowe) handling the case.

The dispute was over Naxos' "restored" versions of several historical classical musical performances, the rights to which are owned by Capitol. Naxos had obtained the original shellac recordings of these performances and, after attempting to upgrade the sound quality, sold CD versions of the recordings in competition with Capitol's own restorations. After Naxos rebuffed Capitol's demand to cease and desist, Capitol sued under various state law theories, including unfair competition and common law copyright infringement. However, the district court granted summary judgment against Capitol, holding that Naxos did not infringe any of Capitol's rights in the recordings because (1) the recordings were originally made in the U.K., where copyright protection had long since expired, (2) Capitol had not shown the "bad faith" necessary to establish unfair competition, and (3) Naxos' restorations, which upgraded the sound of the original recordings, were "new products".

In a broad opinion, the Court of Appeals held that (1) "New York law provides common-law copyright protection to sound recordings not covered by the federal copyright act, regardless of the public domain status in the country of origin, if the alleged act of infringement occurred in New York"; (2) "fraud or bad faith is not an element of an infringement action in modern New York law"; and (3) "even assuming that Naxos had created a 'new product' due to its remastering efforts that enhance sound quality, that product can be deemed to infringe on Capitol's copyright to the extent that it utilizes the original elements of the protected performances."

Edited August 12, 2005 by montg