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

[Malcolm - Venerable Music]

Hello Alan - Actually Bear Family did successfully sue JSP for lifting 
recordings from their Carter Family set. There is some information about the 
case in this article - 
http://www.indicare.org/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=98

I think JSP had to cough up quite a bit of money for this. I also seem to 
remember EMI threatening them for their Bunny Berigan set which may have 
been lifted from Mosaic? I don't think this ever went to court, but the set 
was pulled from production. So there is at least some legal precedent I 
suppose?

Not sure if this is true, but I also heard that Bear Family has begun to put 
inaudible spikes in their recordings to help identify other of their 
recordings improperly used?

Malcolm

Venerable Music - http://www.venerablemusic.com/
78rpm Auctions - http://www.vmauctions.com/
On Myspace - http://www.myspace.com/venerablemusic

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Alan Bunting" <alanbuntinguk at yahoo.com>
To: "78-L Mail List" <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2010 6:22 AM
Subject: Re: [78-L] OLD TIMES label - reissues of ASV CDs


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
> _______________________________________________
> 78-L mailing list
> 78-L at klickitat.78online.com
> http://klickitat.78online.com/mailman/listinfo/78-l
>



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