Date:         Wed, 5 Oct 2005 17:07:03 -0400
Reply-To:     Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List
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Sender:       Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List
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From:         Steven Smolian <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:      Re: Copyright of treasures
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Why ar these not copyright?  This sure looks highly actionable infringing to 
me.

Seven Smolian


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Ross" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, October 05, 2005 4:51 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Copyright of treasures


>I think it's a serious mistake to compromise the intellectual property 
>rights of professional musicians by placing their performances on the 
>Internet without their knowledge or permission. It would seem like there is 
>a subjective difference between distributing field recordings of 
>traditional singers performing material from the oral tradition like the 
>ones in the Hunter collection and recordings of professionals who earn a 
>portion of their livelihoods from sales of their recordings, and who depend 
>upon the quality of their recordings to generate new gigs.
>
> In many cases, the San Diego Festival recordings might be 
> less-than-perfect performances or compositions that the musicians might 
> not want in circulation. It's simply wrong to assume that "most, if not 
> all of the performers will be happy to see their work of 30 or 40 years 
> ago come to light for public enjoyment and scholarly research," especially 
> if they do not receive any compensation. Putting these recordings on the 
> Net without permission is little more than theft of intellectual property.
>
> As archivists, I believe we have an obligation to respect the rights of 
> the performers. We should never place recordings of living performers into 
> general distribution without the specific permission of those performers. 
> As soon as something is on a public Internet site, we (and the performers) 
> lose control of any subsequent distribution.
>
> There's at least one case in which a performance from the San Diego Folk 
> Festival found its way to an LP without the knowledge or approval of the 
> performer. The producers of the LP (at KPBS-FM) assumed that their 
> broadcast release was adequate to distribute their recordings, but the 
> singer (who was also composer of the song in question) didn't know about 
> it until he found a copy of the LP. And of course, Murphy's Law meant that 
> it was a song that he did not want in circulation.
>
> Here at Northwest Folklife, we are making festival and concert recordings 
> available to researchers and the public in listening stations, but we will 
> not place the actual recordings online. We evaluate requests for copies 
> form bona fide researchers on a case-by-case basis.
>
> At  10/5/2005 10:38 AM, Russ Hamm wrote:
>>Our expectation is that most, if not all of the performers will be happy 
>>to see their work of 30 or 40 years ago come to light for public enjoyment 
>>and scholarly research. We shall see whether any 'cease and desist' orders 
>>result.
>>
>>Unfortunately, a lot of material like this resides in archives that are 
>>difficult to access. Our model that we would aim for is that of the Max 
>>Hunter Folk Song Collection at Missouri State University 
>>(http://www.missouristate.edu/folksong/maxhunter/). Here anyone can access 
>>the entire sound collection in several different formats, as well as 
>>complete text of song words and musical notation! Check out their 
>>statement about copyright - 
>>http://www.missouristate.edu/folksong/maxhunter/copyright.html. The 
>>statement essentially acknowledges the rights of the original performers 
>>and encourages respect and consideration on the part of those who access 
>>the archive - but places the burden on the user to not violate commonsense 
>>considerations.
>
> John Ross
> Sound Archivist
> Northwest Folklife
>
>
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