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----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Fine" <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Hopefully, someone with some pull will suggest something along the lines of
this: if a recording is
out of print for 5 years or more, anyone may lease a digital master for a
reasonable rate and
reissue the recording, paying a reasonable royalty to the copyright owner. I
wouldn't care so much
about the long copyrights if material could be kept in print. Since owners do
not seem overly eager
to keep more obscure stuff in print, this would be a mechanism for them to
actually make more money
from what they own and the public could enjoy a wider variety of material.
What shouldn't be the
norm are userous "minimum quantity" deals where someone wishing to license
obscure material --
which, by its very nature, is not going to sell a ton of copies -- has to
front a large pile of
money that he is unlikely to earn back. This seems to be the biggest barrier
keeping a lot of this
material from being licensed. At this point, there even exist
already-amortized digital masters of a
lot of material because so much material once available on CD is now out of
print. In the classical
and jazz genres particularly, there is a surprising amount of material once
available on CD and long
available on analog formats that is now out of print. The general health of
the music business does
not bode well for much of this material ending up back in print, except
possibly as greatly lower
quality iTunes files.
I would go further! Any copyrighted sound recording which is no longer
"readily available" (term to be defined in the amendment) can be copied
and sold subject to the payment of performer and publisher royalties
as defined in existing contracts and/or agreements concerning the
recording. In other words, "Use it...or LOSE it!" This way, the
"innocent" people involved (artists, composers, usw.) wouldn't lose
from the reissues.
If, of course, the publisher's copyright has "died of old age," or
there were no artist royalties payable (the usual case for most
78-era recordings), such royalties wouldn't have to be paid by the
reissuing party.
And, if the reissuing party wanted access to an existing master
recording rather than using a record, that would have to be arranged
with the holder of that master (most likely the owner of the
copyright on the recording as well).
This would mean that still-in-print recordings (Elvis, Glenn Miller,
Caruso, usw.) could NOT be reissued by competing companies (oddly
enough, that would be quite legal in Canada if the original was
cut before January 1, 1956...)...but no-longer-in-print recordings,
even more recent ones, could be. This would also allow artists who
felt their records had been poorly promoted or such, and thus
can only be found in "cut-out bins," to reissue their "magnum opi"
and have a try at selling it themselves!
Steven C. Barr