# Copyright in classical music recordings



## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

I'm not sure this post belongs here or in the Recorded Music and Publications forum, and this issue no doubt has been raised before, but due to a recent (but now closed) thread, I thought it worth reiterating:
In the US, there currently are no sound recordings in the public domain. Pre- February 1972 recordings are not subject to Federal copyright law until 2067, and a major court decision on the subject (Capitol v. Naxos) suggests that under the basic copyright principles that apply otherwise, copyright protection is forever (a bad and wrong decision imo, but there it is) and post- February 1972 recordings now have 70 years of copyright protection in the US and the EU, though it is still only 50 years in some other countries. As a result, old recordings available for sale or accessible for free abroad often are unavailable by any legal means in the US. Now, who cares about those dusty old pre-1972 recordings? We classical music fans, that's who.
This situation encourages illegal sales to American customers of music freely available in other countries, especially non-EU countries that still observe the 50-year copyright period. Fortunately, over the past 20 years, many of these long out-of-print classical records, including even those from small obscure labels, have been legitimately reissued one way or another. A surprising number of these have appeared on Youtube in recent years, I assume legally(?). There are still exceptions, of course.
I wonder if this situation will continue. The system is easy to cheat, as with a VPN server that can enable one to access online resources unavailable in one's home jurisdiction. Sellers from non-EU European countries burn CDs, no doubt from free downloads available in Europe from libraries and the like, and market them on ebay.
I'm not condoning copyright violations of any kind but giving your credit card number to some anonymous foreign seller in particular is sheer lunacy.


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## Monsalvat (11 mo ago)

Disney _really_ likes Mickey Mouse to be copyrighted... what else can I say. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act


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## ribonucleic (Aug 20, 2014)

fluteman said:


> Sellers from non-EU European countries burn CDs, no doubt from free downloads available in Europe from libraries and the like, and market them on ebay.
> I'm not condoning copyright violations of any kind but giving your credit card number to some anonymous foreign seller in particular is sheer lunacy.


You give your credit card number to eBay - not to the seller.

The original term of copyright in the United States (long predating sound recording, of course) was 14 years - extensible by another 14 years if the author was still alive. The current 95 years is an obscenity worth defying on general principle.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

ribonucleic said:


> You give your credit card number to eBay - not to the seller.
> 
> The original term of copyright in the United States (long predating sound recording, of course) was 14 years - extensible by another 14 years if the author was still alive. The current 95 years is an obscenity worth defying on general principle.


Right. My point was that buying on ebay is OK but not some random dude on the internet, especially from a foreign country. And you're also right as to copyright. It's supposed to be a limited property right that provides sufficient incentive to innovate but doesn't allow the holder to restrict use forever.


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