The songs are not works for hire (despite the efforts of a former congressional staffer to slip that one in a bill as a rider...now an RIAA lawyer) so the question is only who owns the copyright. If the writer sold the copyright totally then its life+70. In the case of recordings/studio tapes/masters etc, those are the property of the studios and probably are works for hire given the way recording deals work.
Ronald Austin <ronald@caprock-spur.com> Sent by: owner-dvd-discuss@eon.law.harvard.edu
12/11/2002 08:38 AM
Please respond to dvd-discuss
To: dvd-discuss@eon.law.harvard.edu
cc:
Subject: Re: [dvd-discuss] Specific ironies of the CTEA
Oops I missed the orignal post! So I don't know who wrote this... John Zulauf
I think....
> Beyond that is the impact of death variability on uses of the public
> domain. Instead of all works from a given period being released into
> the public domain -- allowing a critical mass of works for study or
> revival-of-interest. "Life-plus" pseudo randomly withholds and releases
> works based on the age of the author when the work was created and when
> the author dies (with such arbitrary elements as accident (Aliyah, and
> "the day the music died"), war (Glenn Miller), the quality of local
> health care (Jim Henson), personal mental health care (Kurt Cobain),
> parental sanity (Marvin Gaye), assassination (Selena) among many
> others. How one purports to promote progress with this plethora of
> unpredictabilities, uncertainties, and unequal rewards is imponderable.
Wouldn't the copyrights of these "Dead" people be held by the record company
if they were still under contract when they died? If so then the copyright
wouldn't expire for 95 years or am I missing something?