[78-L] OLD TIMES label - reissues of ASV CDs

[Alan Bunting]

As someone who did the restoration and re-mastering for dozens of Living Era CDs, often using transfers provided by David Lennick, (although not any of the earlier ones so far "re-issued" by Old Times) I too will be asking Ray if he knows anything - but not until next week as he is currently away on holiday.

Personally I doubt very much if Universal, the present owners of Sanctuary, who were the last owners of ASV / Living Era, would agree to any Living Era material being re-issued by anyone else, especially as they have issued several CDs on their Decca label using the Living Era brand (Gracie Fields, Judy Garland, Pennies From Heaven to name but three) and have also re-issued a few original Living Eras where all of the content came from Universal group labels.

Of course, as all of the original recordings used on Living Era material were out of European Copyright and thus available for anyone to use, whether or not Old Times are breaking any copyright laws by re-issuing Living Era's restorations of them "as is" takes us into a very grey area.

So far as I know, the legality of ripping off someone else's restorations to issue yourself has never been challenged in the courts anywhere in the world - certainly not in the UK - and opinions vary as to how successful such a challenge would be. In any case, the cost of doing so would far exceed any profits made by the original issuing company, even if they won, as Living Era explained to me when the Percy Faith 2CD set I did for them had many tracks "stolen" and issued, exactly as they were, by at least two other companies.

My view is that the only thing Old Times have to do is pay the necessary composer royalties (I wonder if they are doing this?) and keep their fingers crossed that Universal won't flex its muscles when (or should I say "if") they find out and start threatening them.

Of course, if they replicate the original art work and booklet notes, then they are contravening copyrights which are very different from those concerning the recordings themselves.

Alan Bunting




--- On Tue, 7/9/10, David Lennick <dlennick at sympatico.ca> wrote:

> From: David Lennick <dlennick at sympatico.ca>
> Subject: Re: [78-L] OLD TIMES label - reissues of ASV CDs
> To: "78-L Mail List" <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
> Date: Tuesday, 7 September, 2010, 23:07
> I shall have to ask Ray Crick about
> this!
> 
> dl
> 
> On 9/7/2010 6:01 PM, J. E. Knox wrote:
> > Greetings from FixitLand!
> >
> > On Sep 7, 2010, at 2:52 PM, David Lennick wrote:
> >
> >> I haven't been receiving e-mail or snail mail from
> World's for a
> >> while..got a
> >> link? The only "official" reissue outlet for
> Living Era product is
> >> Retrospective, a label being issued by Nimbus, and
> UMG has brought
> >> out a few
> >> titles that were exclusively Decca material and
> other labels they
> >> now own (MGM,
> >> Mercury, London etc). I'd be curious about this.
> >
> > I just got their weekly E-mail, actually...
> >
> > Current month's listing: http://www.worldsrecords.com/catalog/sep10-6.html
> > Ren Brown E-mail: info at worldsrecords.com
> >
> > Take care,
> >
> >
> > J. E. Knox "The Victor Freak"
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > 78-L mailing list
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