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Re: [ARSCLIST] Correspondence with Lawrence Lessig
At 01:53 PM 7/21/2003 -0400, stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Aren't these "life +" copyright terms on the songs, rather than the sound
recordings? And, is it not true that sound recordings before 1972 are not
copyrighted due to an oversight of the writers of the original law, so
they had to be protected by various state anti-piracy laws? Keep in
mind that until after the 1942-44 AFM strike, it wasn't standard practice
to pay royalties to recording artists, so that in 99.9% of cases their
lifespans wouldn't affect what they could collect!
"Life"+ in general applies to international text and music copyright, but
as I understand not to the U.S. version. In that, I may well be in error;
my interests are primarily in public-domain material in copyright performance.
15 February 1972 is the date before which there is no U.S. *federal*
copyright protection, since that is the earliest date at which a sound
recording can be considered to have been fixed. (No, they were not broken
before then. <G>) However, state and common law still apply. They are only
pre-empted where federal law is defined, i.e., after 15 February 1972.
Beyond that, matters get complicated.
Mike
mrichter@xxxxxxx
http://www.mrichter.com/