Re: [ARSCLIST] Orphan Audio Symposium?

["Schooley, John" <John.Schooley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sam,

Thanks for the reply.  I looked over the relevent section of the report, and unfortunately it's just what I suspected:  there aren't really any rules regarding this type of material (to quote the report: "the cases...provide no clear answer.").  While a copyright claim would be unlikely, the legal department recommendation would no doubt be to do nothing, rather than to take action without a clear-cut legal precedent.  This ties in with what I was getting at in another post:  the default position for most institutions will be to take no questionable actions regarding copyright, regardless of how unlikely the threat of legal action might be.   

(Also, I don't have an exact dates for the recordings. They may have taken place after 1972.)

-Schooley

-----Original Message-----
From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List [mailto:ARSCLIST@xxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Sam Brylawski
Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2009 1:27 PM
To: ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Orphan Audio Symposium?

Regarding this specific issue, I suggest that you take a look at the 2nd copyright and audio preservation study written by Prof. June Besek for the NRPB, "Copyright and Related Issues Relevant to Digital Preservation and Dissemination of Unpublished Pre-1972 Sound Recordings by Libraries and Archives"
(http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub144/pub144.pdf). Besek addresses specifically putting press conferences on the web.

Sam

------------
Sam Brylawski
Editor and Project Manager
Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Recordings University of California, Santa Barbara http://victor.library.ucsb.edu



On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 1:32 PM, Schooley, John<John.Schooley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> "Also, I think that we can add most recordings of radio broadcasts to this category. 99.9% of them have certainly been abandoned by their rights holders, at least until a party with rights gets wind of someone trying to distribute them. It could be argued that these are the opposite of "orphans." They have too many parents. But the problems surrounding them are the same as those for orphans."
>
> I am particulary interested in this.  We have in our collection some interviews recorded from a local radio station in the early 70's.  The station was short-lived and no longer exists.  There are some very interesting interview subjects (Professor Longhair, Al Stricklin, and...Leonard Nimoy, among others).  I would love to put some clips of these interviews up on our web site.  The content is interesting, and the "big names" (well, Nimoy anyway...I am more interested in the piano players, but Spock IS currently in a big summer blockbuster) might help us attract a few page hits and attention.  However, the copyright status of this sort of thing is so muddled that I wouldn't really know where to begin.  And I'm told that, should you ask, the legal department's answer regarding anything complicated is usually "NO".
>
> -----Original Message-----