[78-L] (On list) European Sound Recording Copyright Extension

[Michael Shoshani]

On 01/07/2012 11:14 AM, Alan Bunting wrote:

> Anyone wishing to attempt to understand what happens when this seriously flawed piece of legislation is eventually implemented should take a look at an article I wrote for the latest issue of "Journal Into Melody" , the magazine of The Robert Farnon Society. One thing not mentioned in the article, and which I am still not sure of, is whether there will be an agreed implementation date common to all EU members.  If there isn't, then even more chaos will result!
>
> http://www.rfsoc.org.uk/jim76.shtml
>

There is a concern I've had that's been discussed in the official Glenn 
Miller Archive group concerning the copyright status in Europe of 
American recordings made during the 1940s and before.

My presumption has long been that since these recordings would have long 
passed their 50 year mark, they are in the public domain in, say, the UK 
- even though they are still under copyright in their home country, the 
US. However, the idea has crossed my mind that this may not be the case; 
that US recordings from that era may never have been copyrighted in the 
UK in the first place.

To use Glenn Miller as an example, his records were made in the USA, but 
in the UK they were issued on HMV under the cross-licence agreement EMI 
held with RCA for records originating on RCA's labels.  However, a 
licence to issue a foreign record does not necessarily give one a 
registered copyright.

Until 1972, there was no federal copyright protection for sound 
recordings in the US, only state laws. Indeed, it is the state law of 
New York (which protects copyright in recordings going back to the 
tinfoil era!) that is used in court cases today when imports are brought 
in that violate US copyrights, even if the material is public domain in 
the country in which the imported CD originates.

The United States did not join the Universal Copyright Convention until 
the 1950s, and the Berne Convention until the 1980s. So it is 
conceivable that, rather than a UK (or EU) copyright in a record of 
1940s US origin having expired, that perhaps it never existed in the 
first place since its originating country had no national copyright law, 
and thus there was nothing to reciprocate.

Thorny thicket? I'm pretty sure it is, yes. But I wonder how easy an 
answer would be to obtain.

Michael Shoshani
Chicago