Richard isnt wrong about recording giving copyright, I wasn't sufficiently clear.
What I meant was that when, for instance, the Carter Family learned a song from and old-timer and and then performed it in a recording studio for commercial release, they could claim the copyright on the original song. If I may quote from an essay in the 'Old-time String Band Song Book by John Cohen, 1964. (Oak publications USA) - probably infringing copyright as I do so. ------------------------------- In the past few years, while folk music has become a national fad and an industry, some scholarship has been used and abused for other purposes. Academic folklorists have often found it necessary, or feasible to copyright songs they have collected. Many recent songwriters have rearranged the old songs and carefully researched them to establish them in the public domain. Once they have shown that, they can claim the compositions as there own with little fear of counter-claims. This is the saddest part of the situation: it has reached the point where everyone feels obliged to copyright something before someone else does it, even though though the claim may be questionable in the first place. Fear begets fear money, begets only money and the question of morality is left behind. ---------------------------------- He is the referring mainly to song and the law may have changed since then of course, but I always bear this in mind when discussing copyright. Barry On 16 Jan 2009 at 9:36, Richard York wrote: > Hi, > Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm sure simply recording it does confer > > copyright, or at least has in the past, justly or not. > When various people collected folk singers earlier in the C20th, I > believe it's still an issue which rankles that by doing so they did > exactly that. > I was told that there's one huge collection of traditional material > which apparently at least recently had exactly this issue, & probably > still does; sorry, I can't remember for sure which so won't name any. > Old ladies & gents innocently sang their songs into the nice > gentleman's microphone, only to find that he now owned their songs. > > I think Barry, that it goes on for 75 yrs after the owner's death - > certainly does in the case of composers. > > The EFDSS library would supply more details. > Best wishes, > Richard. > > To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
