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Welcoming Recorded Music to the Public Domain

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Re: Welcoming Recorded Music to the Public Domain

#3

Post by AlbertCory »

For a good time, peruse [1].

At Google, I was running the Cinema Club (in-person only showings of movies on DVD every Thursday night). I came across this movie and loved it. It had 4 stars from Roger Ebert. How you gonna beat that? Lots of people including me wanted to show it at Google.

It turns out that Ms. Paley had figured her 12 songs from the 1920s must be out of copyright, right? Wrong. The songs were not, and the publisher asked for (if memory serves) $40K or so per song.

Rather than negotiate it down and use that 4-star review to make $$$ from it, she did this Creative Commons thing. But you can't give away what you don't own.

Google's lawyer said No. She did some more complicated stuff, and the lawyer said "I've spent an hour trying to figure this out, and it's way more time than I should spend. So: still No."

It's a fun movie, though. Watch it.

[1] https://www.sitasingstheblues.com/

Re: Welcoming Recorded Music to the Public Domain

#4

Post by namibj »

sverhagen wrote: post #2

Per that article and one it links to, there seems 100 year old (1922) and 50 year old (1972) music to be coming into the public domain, and I'm wondering why this happens in bulk on January 1st and not x years after whatever release date mid-year?

I don't remember ever seeing a copyright date more granular than the year, in any copyright notices on blogs and source code.

Re: Welcoming Recorded Music to the Public Domain

#6

Post by kadoban »

namibj wrote: post #4
sverhagen wrote: post #2

Per that article and one it links to, there seems 100 year old (1922) and 50 year old (1972) music to be coming into the public domain, and I'm wondering why this happens in bulk on January 1st and not x years after whatever release date mid-year?

I don't remember ever seeing a copyright date more granular than the year, in any copyright notices on blogs and source code.

From everything I've ever heard, copyright notices don't mean a lot though, in that regardless of if I put one on my website or not, I still have a copyright on my works.

Re: Welcoming Recorded Music to the Public Domain

#8

Post by Zenst »

I was curious as to how much music is in the public domain with a per year breakdown. Equally, how much is released straight into the public domain per year these days compared to older copyrighted material lapsing into the public domain.

Alas a quick search yielded nothing standout at all data wise.

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