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----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Fitzgerald" <[log in to unmask]> > At 05:49 PM 1/20/2009, Paul D wrote: >>The Constitution states for a limited time. That could be >>interpreted from 1 day to the lifetime of the artist. > Boy, those would be great minimum/maximum limits. The problem is that > Sonny Bono himself said that his interpretation of "a limited time" > was "forever minus one day". And that's a problem. > Exactly as his copyright-law admendments all but officially enshrined! There is, admittedly, a difference between "Forever minus one day" and January 1, 2067...but not for most of us old-timers who inhabit 78-L and/or ARSCLIST...?! As of RIGHT NOW, we have 57 years, eleven months and ten days before we can sell ANY existing sound recording...including, should we find the original, Thomas Edison's recitation of "Mary Had a Little Lamb"...! (In eleven more months and ten more days they're going to turn me loose"...?! > And research suffers. What is fair game and absolutely routine for > scholars of the baroque is verboten for scholars of twentieth century > music. Our hands are tied and we have a tough time doing work on > music where we could actually speak to the participants and get > firsthand answers. > We can SPEAK to them all we want...we just CAN'T sell copies of their sound recordings (or, in most cases, buy copies, unless we can locate an original plus the machine needed to play same...?!) THIS is why I own 54,000+ 78rpm phonorecords (which I COULD legally reissue here in Canada, but CAN'T down in the US Of A...?!) FEH!! Steven C. Barr