John,

I'll say this with all the confidence of the uninformed lay person: I'm of
the opinion that the NY Court of Appeals misruled in Capitol vs Naxos, for
one simple yet very glaring reason.

The case involved Naxos' CD issues of certain 1930s recordings that Capitol
was also issuing, and the court ruled (if I understand this correctly) that
even if a recording made in the UK had had its own country's copyright
expire, the state copyright in NY covered it. and thus EMI still owned a
copyright here and could license Capitol, who could then sell the material
in the States.

All of which is moot now, since EMI no longer exists, and the classical
catalog belongs to Warner Music now. But I digress.

Here's the thing, though. At least one of these recordings, the Menuhin
performance of Elgar's Violin Concerto in B Minor, Op 61, was released in
the United States by Victor as a 6 record 78 RPM album (Victor Musical
Masterpiece M174), under license from HMV/EMI. I would think that,
logically, if state copyright lasting until 2047 were to be in effect in
the state of New York, then for this recording it would rest with Sony,
whose forebears issued this material originally within New York State.

I would imagine that many, if not most (indeed, if not all) of the other
recordings involved in this debacle would have also been issued by Victor
in the US at some point, considering the popularity of the artists
involved. This should have given copyright precedence to these, under the
logic of the NY Court of Appeals, unless I'm misunderstanding things very
badly.

(Personally, I like the idea of 50 year expiration. So much of our cultural
heritage is hamstrung by our inane system...)

Michael Shoshani
Chicago



On Tue, Apr 25, 2017 at 11:53 AM, John Haley <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> <<Pre-1972 sound recording copyright is (pardon my strong language)
> insane.  :-)>>  Not insane because it doesn't really exist.  You could not
> copyright a sound recording under U.S. federal law before 1972, period.
> Lots of people have tried to change that with creative lawsuits, but it has
> not been changed.
>
> What a handfull of states have done trying to fill that void (what is
> laughingly called "state law copyright law") is what's insane--an
> inconsistent hopeless mess (Trust me--I'm a lawyer!).
>
> Fortunately, none of this stuff prevails in non-US, where copyright law is
> far clearer.
>
> Best,
> John
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 25, 2017 at 12:42 PM, Leggett, Stephen C <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > The rather novel  strategy by the CBS legal team involved a deep dive
> into
> > the U.S. Copyright Office's Circular #56  (see bottom page 3 and top page
> > 4  here. https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ56.pdf
> >
> >
> > Not sure if this will stand but at least an A- for legal creativity by a
> > researcher!
> >
> > Pre-1972 sound recording copyright is (pardon my strong language)
> > insane.  :-)
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List [mailto:
> > [log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Wolf, James L
> > Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2017 12:32 PM
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Copyright ownership
> >
> > Your client is probably referring to the bizarre decision last year from
> a
> > US District Court in California. A judge decided that remastering a
> > pre-1972 recording essentially created a new work, copyrightable by the
> > remastering engineer. This article provides an analysis and contains a
> link
> > to the decision itself: https://www.techdirt.com/
> > articles/20160602/07371934600/this-is-bad-court-says-
> > remastered-old-songs-get-brand-new-copyright.shtml
> >
> > As far as I know, this decision hasn't been tested by an appeals court
> > yet, but I can't imagine that it will stand for very long. Still, I can't
> > blame your client for being worried.
> >
> > James
> >
> >
> >
> > All opinions personal, no representation of LC policy, etc.
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List [mailto:
> > [log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Louis Hone
> > Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2017 11:46 AM
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: [ARSCLIST] Copyright ownership
> >
> > I just finished audio restoration for a client who recorded an LP 60
> years
> > ago. He owns the original copyright and all the rights (including
> > publishing) associated with this LP. I digitized the vinyl, did the
> > appropriate cleaning up with RX5, and a bit of mastering to top it off.
> > Sounds good, everybody is happy.
> >
> > However at the end of the project, the client was adamant that I sign him
> > a "release" stating that I was not the owner of this new digitized
> version
> > of his LP. He had read somewhere that if a recording that is out of
> > copyright, is digitized and cleaned up and rereleased, then the person or
> > company doing this restoration is now the owner of the copyright.
> >
> > I have been doing audio restoration for 20 years now and that is a first
> > for me. Yes I did sign the release (otherwise he wasn't paying me).
> >
> > Anyone else have that situation ?
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > Louis
> >
>