Here’s one for those people who think that copyright laws don’t really matter, from the folks over at Marginal Revolution. It’s referring to the sales of Elvis’ rereleased “That’s All Right.”

Under current EU law, sound recordings are classified as “performance” and copyrighted for a period of 50 years. This is not to be confused with compositions, which remain in copyright for the artist’s lifetime plus 70 years…

Nevertheless what this law does mean is that, from January, anyone may store, share, swap or commercially release That’s All Right without recourse to RCA, who currently own rights to the track as part of their back catalogue. …

Faced for the first time with losing significant back catalogue profits, the industry is lobbying to change the law. …[But]for every one recording that has the power to reach number three in the commercial charts fifty years after its original release, there are hundreds if not thousands of tracks that do not.

Although these recordings no longer have any commercial value to their rights holders, they are of tremendous value in terms of our cultural heritage. But the mechanisms of copyright law mean that, should the European Parliament choose to heed the music industry, keeping Elvis out of the public domain for a further 45 years or even more, the King will drag down with him this huge body of commercially worthless but culturally significant work.

Works of no commercial value will be orphaned, languishing in forgotten store cupboards at record company headquarters when they could be enjoying a digital rebirth in the public domain.

I’m a swing dancer. I’m also in charge of music for the Carleton Rugcutters, so of course I’m interested in expanding my music collection. So when I heard about this offer, I figured I’d better snap it up. Well, poor student that I am, I haven’t gotten around to it yet. But a 40 CD set for under $100 is a great deal. Better yet, here in Europe, since it isn’t an import, you can get it for even less. It seems like a steal, right?

And then you find out that audio recordings are performances, and they are only copyrighted for 50 years in Europe. Cheap European box sets of old music are all over the place because they don’t have to pay any artists’ royalties. They’re free to collect up and archive all the lesser-known recordings that most jazz collections don’t bother finding. Why pay as much money for some wussy American jazz collection?

Of course, this also means that as long as I am safely in Europe, I’m free and legal to load up Kazaa and download Basie to my heart’s content (though I won’t be doing that). It also means that the German record label that put this CD out gets paid only for the work they really do, compiling a sweet track list and packaging it for my convenience.

Sometimes it’s nice to get what you pay for.

Posted on August 14th, 2004 by Lee
Filed under: Uncategorized