Entertainment For Lively Minds
Copyright
Posted by Johan on 20 January 2011 - 11:05pm.
In Fopp today, I noticed that loads of stuff which came out in the 50s (i.e is now over 50 years old) is available on all sorts of small labels, and certainly not the major labels they were previously released on.
It was mainly jazz and blues. For instance loads of Miles Davis CBS albums, Frank Sinatra's Capitol albums, John Lee Hooker, etc etc.
So my question is, in two or three years time, will the likes of The Beatles, Dylan, and The Stones be out of copyright, and will we start to see them re-released by anyone who fancies doing so?
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I'd love someone
to explain exactly how this works in simple words.
Surely it's not the case that simply anyone can issue material which is out of copyright?
It depends on the EU.
The current rule is that the copyright on actual recordings expires at the end of the calendar year 50 years after the recording first issue. So anything released in 1960 expired just under three weeks ago.
The songwriter's publishing copyright is another matter - those currently expire 70 years after the relevant party's death. So these out-of-copyright CDs should still be paying songwriter's royalties in many cases.
There are efforts afoot at the EU to extend the copyright limit on recordings, but whether this will be amended by 2014 is open to debate.
Cliff Richard
failed to hold back the tide a few years ago by extending mechanical copyright so there should be a few goodies to be had in the shops just now.
Given the rate of internet piracy I doubt re-releasing out of copyright stuff is likely to be of commercial interest to most record labels, but I would recommend Proper Records http://www.propermusic.com for older material as they seem to treat it with all due respect.
Proper...
They are doing a great job. I picked up their Cab Calloway box the other day and it's fabulous. I've probably got seven or eight of their releases and they're all of a very high standard.
Proper job.
If like me you have followed the wonderful Jazz Library broadcasts (and podcasts) you'll have noticed that Proper have produced many of the CDs, and particularly boxed sets, to which they refer.
It's worth knowing too, that not all of their catalogue remains continuously available indefinitely, precisely because they often publish stuff in which only cognoscenti will have an interest; so grab it when you can.
Why
is it 50 and 70 years though?
Arbitrary
Like the concept that two out of seven thousand-million people on the planet cannot possibly have similar ideas at a similar time.
Or, I suppose, the feeling that that's enough generations to have benefitted from Grandad's Christmas chart-topper from 1964 and we're going to have to call time there thanks.
Here's the info you need
JGW above is correct - there are two kinds of copyright
1. Copyright in THE SONG
2. Copyright in the MASTER RECORDING
As far as copyright in the SONG (or COMPOSITION) goes, my understanding is that this has been extended from 50 years since the death of the composer to 70 years.
I don't know about copyright for MASTER RECODING.
But the basic principle is still the same. If you wrote the song, that's one kind of copyright. If you OWN the MASTER RECORDING that's a DIFFERENT copyright.
On a separate but related issue
what's the copyright situation on the printed word?
When does a book go out of copyright and become available to be freely repackaged? And the same question on magazines and magazine content.
I've bene trying to dig out a definitive answer on this for ages so if anybody could help, I'd be grateful.
It's the same
i.e. 70 years after the author's death. I think songwriting and storywriting fall into the same category.
I have a customer who's trying to reproduce a load of out-of-copyright books for peanuts: scanning the pages and reprinting essentially verbatim copies in some emerging eastern economy. Seems a little dubious to me but, of course, perfectly legal.
I've heard of one exception to this rule concerning the rights to J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan, which belong to Great Ormond Street hospital, indefinitely.
Edit: not sure about magazines though, sorry.
Much obliged
Thanks for your help!
There's also
typographical copyright to consider; the layout of a given edition of a book or magazine is protected for 25 years after that edition, so while you may be legally allowed to reproduce the works of Robert Louis Stevenson, you're certainly not allowed to just scan an edition of Treasure Island from 1987.
Having worked in this area...
... the answer to the original question ("will the likes of The Beatles, Dylan, and The Stones be out of copyright, and will we start to see them re-released") is yes, but those people who do it will have to be careful.
First of all, the master they use has to actually be 50 years old, i.e. probably a vinyl copy with the original manufacturing date on it (you can't just buy a CD and rip it.) The better exploiters of public domain (PD) will also clean up this new master and probably add an audio watermark, too.
They have to be careful with sleeve design too, and be sure that either the original sleeve is out of copyright as well (not always the case), or that the image they choose is sanctioned for selling music. On the other hand, as we enter the virtual world, I'd imagine that in a few years time, searching for early HJH/Stones/Dylan material will bring up multiple download providers of the same tracks, all at different prices and quality...
What might stop wary publishers getting into this with major-major artists going forward is the possibility of (say) the HJH getting m'learned friends to put in nuisance/spoiler "passing off" injunctions, which are hard to prove, but there's not a lot of money in the PD game, so the threat of legal fees could be enough to make it not worth bothering with...
Hmm.
About 15 years ago I acquired some dodgy CDs of pre-war blues.
As it was obvious that the compiler of these titles hadn't got access to the original 78s, they would have had to dub them from compilations made by other labels, such as the original copyright holder, complete with tell-tale scratches and surface noise.
So these CDs were all mastered with a lot of digital reverb to mask out the scratches and noise, rendering them almost unlistenable.
Yep, value for money doesn't come into it
.....now's the time to fill yer boots with the 50s.
Not Now Music has a wonderful selection of double CDs which take on board as many as four original LPs by the likes of Monk, Mingus, the MJQ, Miles (indeed, all the 'M's'!) for about £5 or £6 a throw.
Jasmine has also put out a lot of pretty definitive singles compilations by the rock 'n' roll guys n'all.
Treat yerself to the Ace London American comps of 50s material (one so far, 1959) as a treat every six months and really there's little reason in even acknowledging 1960 let alone 2011!
Another label.
The AVID label also has a wonderful selection of recordings. Many are issued as 2CD sets which replicate the content of four full albums, usually including ones that are otherwise impossible to find.
Not Now
I've bought a few of these as well and like them a lot, Miles Davis, Nina Simone, Chet Baker and particularly recommend the Ella Fitzgerald Songbooks at this price.
I still don't really understand
exactly how this works.
For example, let's take the Atlantic label. There's some wonderful and historically important stuff there, much of which is now over 50 years old. Surely it can't be the case that any old reissue merchant can walk into the Atlantic offices and demand access to their master tapes without so much as a by-your-leave?
Do they license the tracks officially from the major labels (as has been happening for decades) or do the reissue labels eschew such niceties and press up their CDs from whatever source is available?
Using the Atlantic records example, could someone explain please?
OK, here we go...
In order to legally release a 50 year-old Atlantic album, you require a 50 year-old "master". In this context, "master" could be the original master tapes (highly unlikely, as you point out), but a vinyl copy is fine, as long as it's 50 years-old, because (obscure legal point alert), the public domain rules only allow for the copyright-free distribution of an actual 50 year-old copy, not of a new copy of a 50 year-old performance.
You don't need permission from the original performers, label or publishers to do this, but (as pointed out above), you will still need to pay songwriter royalties, and the sleeve might not be PD either.
One strange thing - and I'll use Cliff Richard as an example as he was mentioned earlier - is that there is nothing to stop Cliff re-releasing his own old tracks himself on his own label, surely he has enough archives to make stunning collector's editions the fans would lap up... just a thought!
Or....
You can do what one of the audiophile re-issue labels does - acquire access to the masters for a vinyl re-issue, make copies, and then sit on these copies until the copyright expires.
Thanks Micky, that makes more sense
However you seem to be saying that the reissues can be (and often are) pressed from Nth generation master tapes (or indeed vinyl copies).
So it seems as if we need to be very wary of the quality of these reissues, especially if they're not on a respected label?
Yes, be wary
I've seen masters taken from very poor vinyl "originals", though today's professional clean-up technology can work wonders...
Fortunately, these reissues tend to be budget-priced, so no-one's unlikely to be ripped off too badly, but check at least one release from a label before buying their whole catalogue! As mentioned above, Not Now are doing some nice releases at the moment (Fopp always seem to have a big selection), including some vinyl reissues, which is an interesting development...
Good point that last one
Artists complain about the prospect of their records falling out of copyright because that no longer gives their record company the exclusive right to sell them. However it does make it possible for them to sell those records themselves. Since the record is more likely to get profile with their involvement surely this advantages them over anyone else wishing to sell them.