Ray Saintonge &lt;saintonge(a)telus.net&gt; I appreciate your feedback. Anyway, I don't believe my proposal to be naïve because the monetary value of the pre-1942 collection to Sony BMG is not that high compared to their contemporary catalog. The value of a sound collection depends upon: 1) Current costs to maintain the collection (legal, administrative and physically archiving and preserving the metal parts that still exist.) 2) Current profits of reissuing from the collection, and 3) Potential future profits of reissuing from the collection. From the information I have, the net profits, current and future, from the pre-1942 collection are and will remain quite nominal. They are a drop in the bucket compared to revenues of more contemporary sound recordings. In fact, I've heard some rumours (unsubstantiated) that Sony BMG is *losing* money on its pre-1942 collection. But even if this is not true, they clearly are making very little money on their pre-1942 sound collection (it would not surprise me if Sony BMG's top artist today probably makes many times more money for Sony BMG than the entire pre-1942 collection does -- and Sony BMG has hundreds of very profitable artists and thousands of more minor artists. Figure out the math and the pre-1942 collection is a drop in the bucket. Sony BMG may actually be happy to get rid of the collection for $50 million plus some good PR.) Anyway, is there any harm in negotiating with Sony BMG? Until they are asked, we really don't know what their reaction will be. Anyone coming in with $100 million in their pocket will probably get an immediate lunch with Sony BMG's chairman, that's for certain. <laugh/> NO! Read the article I wrote. The sound recordings are NOT covered by Federal copyright law, but by a patchwork quilt of state laws. The recent "Capitol vs. Naxos" copyright ruling was issued by New York State Supreme Court, which held for the plaintiff. So, in essence, Sony BMG holds *state copyright* rights to the collection, and it is enforceable just like Federal Copyright is enforceable. And state copyright laws are more onerous than is Federal Copyright law. And from the rulings, the recording companies don't have to hold the original metal parts to maintain ownership of the recordings. They just have to prove in court that they own them "on paper", and for the major labels from the pre-1942 era it is very easy to demonstrate the chain of ownership -- it is well-documented. Yes, Copyright is a Federal matter. and the U.S. Congress has decided NOT to cover pre-1972 sound recordings with Federal Copyright protection. At present sound recordings are covered by the patchwork quilt of state laws mentioned above and in the article I wrote. And refer to the Capitol vs. Naxos decision. When Federal law kicks in, it then pre-empts state law, but unless Congress acts sooner, for pre-1972 sound recordings we won't see that happen until 2067. The royalty issue I don't deem to be critical for what we are talking about. But to the recording companies, it is a big deal. For a long while MCA, which held the Decca collection, refused to reissue any of their older recordings because they were unsure of their royalty status. And they denied third-party requests to reissue the Decca stuff. This led to a period of time when NOTHING from the Decca collection was legally reissued. Jon Noring

Steve wrote: Well, my reply may have been a little too harsh. Ray did bring up valid points that needed addressing. The whole area of the copyright of pre-1972 U.S. sound recordings is one big tangled can of worms. So it is difficult to write something brief which completely untangles everything to everyone's satisfaction. I'm not sure if anyone, outside of a few top IP attorneys who are interested in the Public Domain, such as Larry Lessig, really have a good grasp of the various nuances (including state laws) regarding pre-1972 sound recordings. And then there's the strategy in how to "free" the older sound recordings -- there will definitely be differences of opinions. The important point, though, is that the corpus of pre-1942 sound recordings should somehow be "freed", and that is something which a few associates and I have been working on the last three years. We have an understanding of the various issues, and a good idea of how to digitally transfer, with state-of-the-art quality, millions of recordings once the "rights" issue is clarified (we are looking at doing this in semi-automated and automated fashion.) As noted before, we have close ties to ARSC as well. And of course Brewster Kahle at the Internet Archive is very interested in this as well, as he and I have discussed this. Once the recordings are "freed" and digitally transferred, the digital copies need to be preserved, as well as made available to the public in some fashion. Also, the "metal parts" need to find a home and we have given that some thought and have top experts (including one who was formerly the head of the sound collection at the Library of Congress) with whom we can consult. So if the person with access to $100 million is interested in the pre-1942 sound recordings, we have a team of experts with good connections in various places that can be leveraged to help out with the acquisition, cataloging, digitization, archiving and distribution of the collection. We also have good connections on the legal front that we may be able to utilize -- even when acquiring the collection there will still be a couple copyright issues to deal with (which I believe are manageable.) Jon Noring (p.s., I keep mentioning "pre-1942". There are a couple reasons why 1942 is a suitable cutoff date which are explained in the paper I previously referenced: http://www.projectgramophone.org/TeleRead-Article-01Nov2003.html In addition to the "royalty" issue (making pre-1942 safer), there's the aspect that 1942 is well before the Rock era which started ca. 1953 (which the recording companies are less willing to part with) and before tape was used for recording -- nearly all commercial recordings before then were mastered as 78 rpm masters -- nearly all issued 78s are, in essence, physical copies of the masters. And some of the original metal masters still exist in good condition, and can be used to press vinyl copies for direct transfer. All in all, though, it is the royalty issue that makes post 1942 recordings more difficult to deal with it, but I suppose we should not rule them out entirely.)

Ray wrote: It is true that the laws in each state are different. From my understanding, 49 of the 50 states (with Vermont being a possible exception) have laws, either common or statutory, which can be used to protect the "monopoly ownership" of sound recordings. They range from copyright to "unfair competition". So trying to bypass New York state won't really help. Capitol had several states they could have proceeded with their lawsuit, and simply chose New York. So long as Naxos did any business in a particular state, a lawsuit could have been brought up there. With the Internet, the venue gets fuzzy, but probably makes it easier to claim doing business in any of the states of the country, even if the "home" of the effort is done in a "safe" state (if one even exists.) I think the important thing is that pre-1972 U.S. sound recordings are covered pretty much nationwide with a web of laws that in aggregate is similar enough to Federal Copyright law to be considered the same -- and probably worse than Federal Copyright law (e.g., commercial recordings from 1889 are still protected in many states until 2067 -- that will be 178 years of copyright-like protection.) I agree that sound recordings are only a part of the corpus of works that should be freed. Those who know me know I'm active in the Public Domain community (e.g., Project Gutenberg, Distributed Proofreaders, LibraryCity, and the proposed Top 1000 books project). I'm also very interested in digitizing local materials. But the older commercial sound recordings have uniquenesses that make them particularly interesting to free: a) Availability -- the public has little access to the wide range of sound recordings (simply due to the fragility of records and no access to playback equipment), while copyrighted books are much easier for the public to find (some library or bookstore has them, or a reissue) and read. 99% of all commercial sound recordings are very obscure, not having been reissued (or the reissues are themselves very obscure) held only by a few collectors and archives, and hard for anyone in the public to access, much less know they even exist. It is now possible to digitize en masse the whole corpus of sound recordings and make them all available to the public -- if the laws allow, which they don't. b) The performances and lyrics are of great cultural significance, on par with any corpus of books. Sound recordings capture a unique look at the culture of the time that cannot be captured with books. I'm not saying sound recordings are superior, but they are not inferior, either. Different and valuable in their own right. Well, I understand what you are saying. But I am not proposing that the funds be turned over to another organization. Most of the funds will go towards the acquisition of the rights of ownership to the works (here sound recordings) which *will* be turned over to the Public Domain -- the rights will not be owned by some other group. This means that anyone can digitize old sound recordings they acquire and put them online or whatever -- no single group will hold an access monopoly on the sound recordings. And note that, regardless of the medium (books, film, sound recordings, etc.), there has to be people to administer the acquisition, and be involved with cataloging, storage, digitization, etc. This costs some $$$ (how much depends upon the kind of media.) Yes, film and sound recordings will have a higher cost of handling, storage and digitization (we can assume with books a DP process could be used for scanning and digitization), which has to be paid for from somewhere. (As noted, however, there are thousands of people who will, on their own, digitize the old sound recordings, with varying levels of quality, so there will be no monopoly on access to the recordings.) My prior comment was to note that there already exists a team of experts (who've been studying this issue and are dedicated to the freeing of the older sound recordings) pretty much ready to go to help with the sound recordings project -- if I were the one with the $100 million, I would consider this *vitally* important. And I know we can leverage other like-minded organizations such as ARSC and the Internet Archive (yes, I've name dropped Brewster Kahle's name -- he *is* very interested in getting all the old sound recordings online) to help out with some of the needed things such as preserving, archiving and possibly even setting up a place to store the still-existent metal parts (the recording companies like Sony BMG will likely not sell their old sound collections until we have a place to store them -- Brewster has talked about a facility to hold all kinds of media artifacts, and the masters could be stored there if that facility comes into existence.) Heck, with a team of people and organizations working together, we could probably find "matching" funds somewhere and leverage the manpower and expertise of this project to begin purchasing the rights to other types of materials, such as various types of books. So this records project can be a springboard to a major acquisition of rights to all kinds of works. In fact, if I had the $100 million, I would be figuring out how to leverage that money to acquire the rights to all older works. So even if this project "furthers our objectives" (where "our" refers to me and the people who I am associated with), our objectives are totally in synch with the goals of the $100 million -- to free up currently encumbered works for the public to *own* and *enjoy*. The team I'm working with will be happy to put together a detailed proposal (like a business plan) pretty quickly if the person with access to the $100 million formally asks us. We are ready... Jon Noring (p.s., I reacquainted myself with who owns what of the pre-1942 U.S. sound recordings: Sony BMG: RCA Victor, Columbia/Okeh, and ARC (a bunch of minor labels) Universal: Decca, pre-ARC Brunswick and Vocalion, and Gennett/Champion EMI: Capitol (founded in 1942, so mostly outside our scope, but was a major label in the 1940's and 50's.) The National Park Service (Federal gov't) owns the Edison collection, which has, I reckon, about 80,000 to 100,000 recordings -- a lot of them cylinders -- Edison went belly-up in late 1929. Although there is controversy about the copyright status of the Edison collection, most assume the recordings are free to use. There were a few minor labels whose ownership is individual, questionable or abandoned, notably the "Grey Gull" group (with about 5000 to 7000 recordings) which sold records in the 1920's and very early 30's. But by and large, I would *roughly* guess that 80-90% of all the pre-1942 recordings ever "waxed" in the U.S. are owned by Sony BMG. But the Universal Music Group pre-1932 Brunswick and Vocalions also hold a pretty solid collection of material, mostly from the 1920's, and they should also be approached. Combine that with the Edison and likely abandoned "Grey Gull", and we would have essentially 99% coverage. The remaining 1% we can probably use or secure the rights to for relatively little.)