 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: kdk
Date: 2018-07-01 04:23
I've read some of what's available from a Google search and see what seem to be either conflicting or sometimes just vague statements about recordings and copyright protection. Most of what I found by people who seemed to be authoritative were about recordings of recent material - pop songs, show tunes, even pieces by the likes of Glass or Prokofiev. I didn't see much about recordings of 18th and 19th century music.
I'm specifically interested in how long recordings of "classical" pieces that are PD in their print form are protected from public use without permission. I may want to embed audio files of classical recordings in a couple of websites I run, so I want to know what I can legally use.
As a practical matter, I'm not sure that any recording company would go to the trouble of trying to prove I have used an excerpt from one of *their* recordings, but still....
The most definitive answer I found was in an 8-year-old Yahoo discussion in which one poster said that in the U.S. all recordings are protected for 50 years from their release, which would put any recording of music by Brahms, Beethoven, etc., and recorded before 1968 in the public domain.
Does anyone have reliable knowledge about this?
Karl
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Author: GeorgeL ★2017
Date: 2018-07-06 20:47
In this case, Google may not be your friend, but it is informative.
Many years ago, before retiring, I was a patent attorney who dabbled very little in copyrights.
Check out http://www.publicdomainsherpa.com/public-domain-sound-recordings.html
The practical answer for how long anything stays under copyright seems to be forever. According to that article, if federal law doesn't protect the work, state law probably does.
The year the music was written doesn't matter. The year the recording was made is what is important, as the recording is what is copyrighted.
If you want to use music from a CD or the like, you probably have the copyright owners name on the CD or its jacket. It never hurts to ask for permission to use the recording; they might say 'yes'. After all, you are advertising their product.
George L
Tucson
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Author: kdk
Date: 2018-07-06 23:18
Thanks to both of you for your responses.
As I suspected, this issue seems even murkier than copyrights on music in printed published format. I had no idea that state laws would be involved, since recording distribution invariably crosses state lines and national borders.
The listing on the Public Domain Sherpa site looks promising. I'll look more closely at the contents later. I'll also read through the FB discussion to see if there's anything applicable to my situation.
Again, thanks to George and Philip,
Karl
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Author: BflatNH
Date: 2018-07-09 19:27
If my memory is correct, doesn't IMSLP have PD recordings along side or before its listings for some works?
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Author: kdk
Date: 2018-07-09 19:50
I had truthfully never looked at those recordings. Spot checking, I see that several show copyright statuses that look like the recording equivalent of a General Public License (GPL), under which a lot of software is free for non-commercial use.
Karl
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Author: kdk
Date: 2018-07-09 23:59
Bennett wrote:
> Many on the Naxos label are by special agreement with imslp:
>
> https://imslp.org/wiki/IMSLP:Naxos
>
This confuses me a little. The wording on the page you've cited says "ANY USE OF THIS MATERIAL SEPARATE FROM THE NML SERVICE MUST BE LICENSED THROUGH NAXOS SEPARATELY. NO SECONDARY EXPLOITATION LICENSE, IS IMPLIED OR GRANTED."
That sounds like using the audio as, for example, a background to even a non-commercial web page would be a violation.
But then IMSLP (I think) adds, "BY CLICKING ON ANY LINK BELOW, YOU ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE TO THE ABOVE AND THAT YOU WILL USE NAXOS MUSIC LIBRARY ONLY FOR PERSONAL NON-COMMERCIAL USES...."
I'm not sure, then, what personal non-commercial uses are allowed except for listening to the recordings on one's own personal computer (or other device).
And, then, at the bottom of the page there is an added reference, "Content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License...," (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/, which seems to be a separate general license that permits its material to be used in almost any way, including commercial use. It seems unclear what the relationship is between the NAXOS project and CCA-SA.
The NAXOS recordings seems to be listed separate from the CCA-SA recordings and, while you can play the NAXOS versions, you can only download the ones in the "Recordings" list, which seem to be CCA-SA-licensed mp3 tracks.
All worth exploring further.
Karl
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