On 4/20/2015 08:18, Leggett, Stephen C wrote:
> "[Un]Happy Together: Why the Supremacy Clause Preempts State Law Digital Performance Rights in Radio-Like Streaming of Pre-1972 Sound Recordings"
>
> http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2595794
>


Reading the abstract, I wonder if such reasoning would have an effect on
copyright of pre-1972 material as well, since one might argue (I say
"might" rather than "could" because I'm strictly among the laity so far
as legal knowledge goes) that local state courts enforcing state
copyright laws might frustrate the intentions of Congress, who for all
intents and purposes left all pre-1972 sound recordings out of copyright.

I never understood Capitol vs Naxos, because Capitol was not only
asserting copyright (presumably as EMI's American representative) in a
recording made over a decade before Capitol Records was formed, it was
asserting copyright in a recording that had no copyright in the United
States at the time it was issued - which it would have been by RCA
Victor in the 1930s, not under copyright but under license. (The Berne
Copyright Treaty covers sound recordings, but the United States did not
become a signatory until 1989.)

(Again, lay person. I know ARSCList has members of the Copyright Office
and the Library of Congress who are more familiar with the ins and outs
of these thorny issues. Also, the ownership situation has changed, and
the former EMI's classical catalog now belongs to Warner Music. Capitol
no longer has any rights in or to the very recording over which they
sued Naxos in the first place.)

Michael Shoshani
Chicago