Re: [ARSCLIST] National Recorded Sound Preservation Study

[Roger and Allison Kulp <thorenstd124@xxxxxxxxx>]

The question is Does Sony/BMG still have any of the Cameo/Pathe stuff?


"Steven C. Barr(x)" <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: 

All true...but none of it addresses the actual problem at hand!

In the USA today...and quite possibly elsewhere, as the record
industry promotes the US idea of "eternal copyright for sound
recordings"...the interested portion (admittedly tiny) of the
public is blocked from legally accessing the ENTIRE known history
of sound recording...except for whatever tiny fraction the
copyright owners (various mega-corporations, for pre-1942 items
as well as many later items insofar as they exist...) consider
to be monetarily worth re-issuing.

If I want to hear a 1917 recording made by the Pathe firm and
issued on a "sapphire-cut" record in the same year...I am at
the mercy of CBS-Sony, who inherited the rights to the Pathe
catalog by virtue of Pathe's merge with Cameo, and the
subsequent merger of that firm with Plaza and Regal to create
the American Record Corporation which evolved into CBS-Columbia
c. 1939.

The likelihood of this multinational, multimillion dollar corporation
reissuing this track, with a potential sale of me and a handful of
others...or even making this track, along with the rest of the
historic recordings which the own, available on the Internet
(even on a pay-to-listen basis?) is somewhere very close to
zero...if not lower!

And therein lies our problem (given our interest in our musical
past...!)

Steven C. Barr


 	
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