Universal Music Donates Master Recordings To Library Of Congress... But Keeps The Copyright
from the so-what-good-is-that? dept
charliebrown was the first of a few of you to send in the recent news of how Universal Music had decided to donate over 200,000 master recordings to the Library of Congress:The American people, through the nation's library, will receive a post-holiday gift of vintage sound recordings from one of the world's largest recording companies. The Library of Congress and the Universal Music Group (UMG) announced today the donation of more than 200,000 historic master recordings--many long out-of-print or never released--to the Library's Recorded Sound Section, which has more than 3 million sound recordings in its collections.All of that sounds nice and surprisingly altruistic from an operation like Universal Music... until you read the fine print. That's because missing from the LoC's excited announcement is the fact that Universal Music retains the copyright on the recordings, and is basically just handing off the physical archival costs to the American taxpayer. It will let the LoC stream the music -- which is better than nothing, but it's not nearly as impressive as actually donating the copyrights as well.
Totaling in excess of 5,000 linear feet, UMG's gift is the largest single donation ever received by the Library's audio-visual division and the first major collection of studio master materials ever obtained by the nation's oldest cultural institution. Among the collection�s thousands of metal and lacquer discs and master mono tapes are released and unreleased versions of recordings by such seminal artists as Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, Tommy Dorsey, Billie Holiday, the Andrews Sisters, Connee Boswell, Jimmy Dorsey, the Mills Brothers, Guy Lombardo, Ella Fitzgerald, Fred Waring, Judy Garland, and Dinah Washington, among others.
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Filed Under: copyright, library of congress, music
Companies: universal music
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Wow.
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Re: Wow.
Instead Universal dumped the work on to the tax payer.
Really, why is this seen a generous act by Universal? What did it cost them?
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Re: Re: Wow.
Anything that gets unearthed here should be released by Universal with the Smithsonian getting a really healthy cut of Universals profits as a finders fee. With Sarbanes-Oxley type of accounting rules strictly enforced.
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It isn't better than nothing, it makes a huge number of original recordings available to the world for free. Why is there a problem here?
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For one, they are getting a lot of credit for "donating" these works when in fact no transfer of copyright is taking place. They still "own" the works by any definition out there. You can guarantee this "donation" will be brought up by IP defenders on a regular basis - but in fact it's not a really a donation at all
Moreover, restoring and preserving these works costs a lot of money - and UMG refuses to do it. They get tonnes of flak from art historians and society in general for letting this stuff deteriorate. Now the taxpayers will be footing the restoration bill, but UMG is still able to commercially exploit the works whenever and however they want. Basically the Library of Congress is paying to fix a private company's damaged merchandise.
Given that under copyright law when they were made, many of these works would be in the public domain now anyway but aren't due to retroactive extensions, I would definitely consider this a "better than nothing" situation.
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"Universal has struck an agreement in which the Library will be granted ownership of the physical master discs while the company retains copyright for the music itself. The Library of Congress will soon begin the process of digitizing the music directly from the master discs, which Universal may eventually issue as commercial releases."
So not only does the LoC get ownership of the masters (to preserve forever), we may even get to see new restored releases of music that might otherwise be lost.
Is every donation to the LoC some sort of scheme to shift costs to the taxpayer? Perhaps we should tell the LoC to stop accepting stuff, it's too expensive to keep history anymore.
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It is exactly what it looks like: rightsholders foisting the costs of digitization onto the taxpayer but giving nothing in return.
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Really? I would say that would make them more valuable - make a new restoration of the masters (which nobody else has access to) and (IIRC) you get a brand new sparkly copyright on the new remaster. Besides, public domain doesn't mean that something loses value, it's just that the original creator no longer retains a monopoly on the original version. There's plenty of PD works that remain constant sellers despite their PD nature.
"we may even get to see new restored releases of music that might otherwise be lost."
How, and at whose expense? Whatever's is done to the masters while they're in the possession of the LoC, nobody can release the restoration without UMG's permission since they retain the copyrights. So, at best, the taxpayer shoulders the burden for the remaster while UMG reaps all the profits. At worst, the restored version is not releasable to the general public.
"Is every donation to the LoC some sort of scheme to shift costs to the taxpayer?"
Every donation with strings attached, yes.
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You get a copyright on the remastered work, but not the original (as the original is still "old"). It doesn't preclude anyone else from using the original recordings once they are in the public domain.
But you missed my key point. When something goes into the public domain, it's economic value (what it can be sold for) drops to near zero. The chance of making money on it is low, so there is no money to keep storing the masters and maintaining them. You have no more rights than anyone else, why would companies want to spend to maintain the things? I suspect that many companies just trash old masters as no longer being relevant, once the material nears public domain their time with it is done.
Instead or recycling the raw materials, what Universal has done is give them to the LoC, who can maintain and remaster them as they see fit, and go from there.
Oh yeah, this is sort of important: If the LoC is the ones doing the remastering, any copyright granted would normally be to them. The agreement probably grants Universal a license, but the LoC might actually profit from this arrangement (reproduction license). So it is unlikely that " UMG reaps all the profits", as you said.
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That is just plain not true. There are tonnes of public domain books that are published in a variety of editions by multiple publishers - why? Because they sell well and are of no cost to the publisher. Seminal PD classics are a great cash cow for publishers.
Or take Night of the Living Dead, which is PD and according to Wikiepedia is available in 23 different DVD editions and 19 VHS editions. Value near zero?
The idea that PD works have no economic value is a ridiculous fallacy.
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For every "seminal" classic, there are hundreds of useless, out of date publications that mean nothing.
Night of the Living Dead is a bit of a misdirection too, as it is too modern to be in PD, except that the film maker made an error when first released. That isn't a very good example of something that has done it's 90 years and been "retired", it is an incredibly exceptional case (and perhaps proof of the value of copyright to the original film maker).
You can always find exceptional cases. Points at 1% of things and saying "all things are like this because of this 1%" is misleading.
I didn't say that PD works have no economic value, I said " it's economic value (what it can be sold for) drops to near zero. ". It still has some value (everything does, even your comments) but it's market price as a result is very low. Remember, this is compared to the value and price of something that they have exclusive rights on. The moment the rights are no longer exclusive, they can no longer sell it as an exclusive product, and must then price compete with anyone capable of reproducing the product. At that point, it's the lowest possible price that wins.
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Sadly, this just shows limited imagination, unsurprising for people on your side of the argument, as ever. Exclusivity does not guarantee sales, especially if you're not willing to offer a good package. I've bought DVDs of PD films for their extra features, and rejected newer movies because I don't want to pay for a barebones edition. The packaging is key, and the original producer often has the upper hand, even if the central product is PD.
Another example: if I look at Amazon right now, there's a Kindle version of Bram Stoker's Dracula for $0.00, yet there's also physical versions for $4.50, $12 and derivative works for even more, ranging from newly illustrated editions to new stories building on Stoker's text. By your logic, none but the Kindle and perhaps $4.50 physical versions would be produced, yet publishers still find ways of selling new copies.
"At that point, it's the lowest possible price that wins."
Untrue, as illustrated above, even if you ignore the possibility of derivative works (which you have to be foolish to omit from the equation).
As for your comments about Night Of The Living Dead, it's true that its age works in its favour to some degree but your "90 years" comment is revealing. It would certainly have been PD a long time ago anyway if the system hadn't been gamed repeatedly since its production. Even so, Romero and Russo have managed to leverage that movie into careers despite a lack of monopoly, even if only certain editions have made them money directly. That's an argument against the need for long-reaching copyright, not an argument against the PD.
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Explain how competition is bad for society? Explain how companies competing fairly in a marketplace by all means including offering lower prices if they choose is a bad thing? Or do you perchance work in the industry thus artificially propped up by governments?
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You can make up elaborate arguments for why they aren't actually worth that much if you want, but the simple fact is they are clearly valuable or there wouldn't be a bunch of entities competing to sell them
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Your comment simply reveals your selfish and mean spirited patterns of thought.
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Exactly. The rights to access the material remains with the public, where it should belong. But, the original creator has access to revenue possibilities unavailable to anybody else. If a fan of the material has access to the washed-out print on most PD DVDs and the newly copyrighted remastered version with additional material not available elsewhere, guess who gets the money? People will still pay the original creator, they just don't have the monopoly.
"When something goes into the public domain, it's economic value (what it can be sold for) drops to near zero"
This is demonstrably untrue, especially for products where the distributor is willing to add extra value to the content that's unavailable to the competitor. This is much more likely to come from the original creator, who has access to material and original sources that nobody else has direct access to.
"I suspect that many companies just trash old masters as no longer being relevant, once the material nears public domain their time with it is done."
Which is what the LoC and other archivers are there for. The problem here is that UMG wants it both ways - they don't want the costs of maintaining the material, but they also want to maintain their monopoly on being able to profit should the opportunity arise. They should not expect to have their cake and eat it - either release the material to PD where it belongs, or don't pass the burden of maintaining culture off to the taxpayer.
"Oh yeah, this is sort of important: If the LoC is the ones doing the remastering, any copyright granted would normally be to them."
I'm a little hazy on the exact legal ins and outs but I don't think so. With PD material, that would be the case, but here it depends on the agreements they have with UMG. Since UMG retain the licence for the original material, any derivative works would belong partly to them, under the terms of the contact with LoC.
Besides, that still leaves out the major point - all of this stuff should, by rights, already be public domain. Any rights retained by UMG on the originals is still more than they should have had under the copyright rules of the time they were produced. That's a problem, especially when they seem to be trying to act like good samaritans for allow the public to have some limited access.
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Why is open source flourishing then?
Why are people selling things on the streets that nobody owns?
It doesn't diminish anything except the "exclusive" part of it, the right to exclude others, everybody then can have a chance to make some money not just one entity, it spreads the love all over and can spark a new economy based on cooperation instead of rivalry.
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That is the problem, and you missed it when you read that part. Translated into layman's terms, it says that the LoC is going to use taxpayer money to restore these masters, and then Universal gets to profit off of that tax money by then SELLING these restorations.
Universal loses nothing, lets someone else foot the restoration and archiving bill, and then gets to sell the music yet again.
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I'm not following here. I thought they already had staff, a budget, and facilities.
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Meh
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What about people who want this stuff on their iPod? What about filmmakers who want to use this music in their movies? What about other online music services that want to add these songs to their own libraries? What about DJs and producers who want to sample them and remix them into brand new tracks?
All of those things are still controlled by UMG. These recordings have not been made free, only one highly limited point of access to them has been made free.
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Otherwise, we at TD would be celebrating the fact that UMG was making these works public domain, which would be a massive step forwards.
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UMG gave away nothing (value wise) but instead its saving lots of $$$ in storage fees + cost of any potential restoration + its practicably gained a whole new set of collection+ (wonder how many hours of uninterrupted Music of music equates to "[over] 5,000 linear feet") which will get allot of interest after this announcement.
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If UMG are retaining the copyrights, I highly doubt that. I'm not even allowed to buy their music through Amazon due to their licensing rules so I doubt they'll let me listen for free.
Even if they are making it global, it's hardly cause for celebration. If that happens, then as a non-US resident, I can stream the music for free but it's *your* taxes that pay for the bandwidth and upkeep costs, while foreign and private organisations aren't allowed to help out.
Hardly progress. It's the kind of empty gesture that's made occasionally so they can pretend to care about the public's rights while maintaining as much control as possible. Some of us still aren't fooled by this kind of transparent posturing. If they want to make a difference, they should make the works public domain - like they would have been before the rules got changed to "protect" label profits.
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Universal isn't bad for "donating" anything or "allowing" it to be streamed - they're bad because of the bad stuff you didn't mention.
At the risk of Godwinning this thread:
"So wait, Hitler unites Germany and solves their economic problems, and he is somehow a bad person for doing it?"
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For a comparison for how things might have gone differently, look at the enormous number of lost films from the silent era. Or, BBC's intentional destruction of most of the early Doctor Who archives just shortly before the show really caught fire in America, to save on storage costs.
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From the point of view of universal who are just shifting the costs onto the taxpayer it's definitely a win but distinctly lacking in class.
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Except that it isn't when UMG still holds all the rights - we have to ask them permission (and be considered infringers if we don't) to use these restorations that we paid for.
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Wrong, wrong, WRONG! The copyright still belongs to UMG, so the LOC can only release the recordings to the public with UMG's permission. We the taxpayers are footing the bill for storage
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I dabble in sample-based music production, and I'd love to start tearing up this stuff for samples (and I almost certainly will) - but I'm not allowed to. I don't own it.
Filmmakers can't use it in their movies without still getting a license from UMG. People can't put this on their iPod without breaking copyright law. The list of ways we don't "own" this stuff goes on and on...
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gets worse
meanwhile I agree, this isn't much of an altruistic donation.
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Maybe a future gift in disguise
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Term is longer than holder can afford to store them.
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Digital Remastered
Atleast Universal wouldn't own it?
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Re: Digital Remastered
This was tried with Beatles music. See Techdirt article here http://goo.gl/WfgoT
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Re: Re: Digital Remastered
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Re: Digital Remastered
No, because they don't hold the copyright on the original versions. The remastered version is a "derivative work," whose copyright is controlled by the original rights holder.
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Poor sap
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National Jukebox
This will probably be the future of music. No need to download and store the individual mp3s; instead just stream from a central location.
I don't need to own the mp3 if I can listen to it on my portable device by streaming it.
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Re: National Jukebox
Letting it all be controlled by one rights-holder is not good.
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Re: National Jukebox
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Most of the media is treating this as an altruistic act by UMG. But tell me, what has UMG given up? What his this cost them?
...seemingly nothing at all, while there are plenty of benefits. That's not altruism. It barely qualifies as a "donation"
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I suspect, though it's true I won't be paying for it either being in the UK (well depends how you look at it I guess), that I will get nothing whatsoever out of this "generous donation to the public". The cynic in me says any streaming will be locked to US IPs only, probably under T&C from UMG (and of course I couldn't use a US proxy... that'd be naughty). Just as my inner cynic says that the T&C almost certainly assign the rights of any remastered content back to UMG. In the unlikely event that they don't I might be persuaded that it's at least a small gesture of generosity rather than pure self interest.
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You can say "everybody wins" if you want, but that gives a pretty skewed version of the situation. In reality, UMG wins big, everyone else gets thrown a bone.
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- The songs are very old and probably wouldn't sell that much except for a niche market where the sums involved still in spite of all their problems don't seem that attractive to them.
- They are shifting the cost of physical maintenance to the public without giving them anything.
- UMG will keep all their rights and continue to "exclude" others from using it.
- This could augment the market and drive some sales for them.
So exactly what they have to give up?
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I don't really like any of this music. Yet, my tax dollars are paying for its restoration. And I can't even change it into music that I do like (through cover versions, sampling, etc).
So: I was forced to pay for something I can't use. How is that a win?
Granted - for society in general, it's better that these were preserved than not. But if Universal doesn't value them enough to preserve them, why should they even be allowed to hold the copyright? If they are really not making enough money off the music to preserve the masters, how is granting them copyright serving any purpose?
If these were in the public domain, the LOC would be spending the same money on restoration, but the public would actually gain the right to use the works. Instead, the public foots the bill, and gains no rights that it didn't already have.
Universal gains a lot, and the public gains a pittance.
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I was just forced at gunpoint to pay for Pandora. Is that how "everybody wins?"
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I doubt it would happen, but honestly, if it is going to be a gift, then the LoC should be able to recoup its costs (all costs--restoration, storage, digitization costs, anything really) before Universal (or any future offerings from other labels) gets a dime.
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Ahhh Yes But
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At least in the long run....
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Already done
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However, I must point out that at the end of the day there IS a silver lining to this story: if the masters were left in Universal's care, they would very likely have rotted away for lack of maintenance by the time their copyrights have expired (or they would have been thrown out).
By letting taxpayers foot the restoration bill, the recordings will at least survive until they enter the public domain! Better than nothing, indeed.
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What makes you think they will ever enter public domain?
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May want to pray to the Gods and offer a virgin sacrifice or two.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_term
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Simple...
Waits about 1 year....
Librarian of Congress ...Releases CD's or what ever of the recordings..
UMG sues.. GOOD LUCK with that suckers! YOU CAN'T SUE THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT... Yeah sure file it... YOU WILL LOOSE!
Possesion is 9/10 of the law.. LoC has the masters... Locked up in a FEDERAL VAULT! Good luck getting the back!
While in detail this is nothing more than passing the storage costs on to the taxpayers, FINE... WE THE TAXPAYERS WILL DO WITH THEM AS WE SEE FIT!
Stream away...
URL please... My streamripper is ready and waiting...
Mp3 saved... and onto the p2p networks!
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Re: Simple...
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Re: Simple...
You certainly can. In fact, your scenario is explicitly prohibited under copyright law. It's in Title 17, Chapter 5, Sec. 11.
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Since we are footing the bill for storage and the costs of registration please tell me where can I pick up my copy of the entire catalog.
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Since we are footing the bill for storage and the costs of registration please tell me where can I pick up my copy of the entire catalog.
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Since we are footing the bill for storage and the costs of registration please tell me where can I pick up my copy of the entire catalog.
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