RE: [cni] Donation of copyrighted works (e.g., sound recordings) to public domain possible?

On Wednesday, August 20, 2003 5:55 PM, Jon Noring [SMTP:jon[_at_]noring.name] wrote:
> Everyone,
>
> It recently was said (and I consider it a revelation) that today's
> "Big Three" recording companies (Sony, BMG and Vivendi/Universal) who
> (reputedly) own the copyrights to the performances of most pre-WWII
> sound recordings, are very resistant to license them out to third
> parties for re-issue because they simply do not know the contract
> royalty history which may exist for these older recordings.

It's true that the strict analysis of the chain of title for rights in older works is a knot of Gordian complexity; it requires an Alexandrian solution. The problem with Jon's solution No 2 is that even the donation of anything specifically-identified would require the sort of not-cost-effective strict analysis.

There is, however, a fairly well-tried Alexandrian solution: voluntary collective licensing. A not-for-profit body is set up to administer the rights in question. X music company grants the body a non-exclusive licence to do their thing with any content owned or controlled by X music company, but only to the extent that it is entitled to license the rights in question. If it doesn't have the rights, they're not in the grant and the not-for-profit doesn't have them. X company doesn't need to give any warranty that it owns any rights at all; it just says that if it does, the not-for-profit can do its thing with them. The not-for-profit then goes and gets the same sort of grant from all the other people and organisations that might own some or all of the rights that it's interested in, until a considered judgement of the rights it has shows that it can go ahead and issue blanket licences covering an entire repertoire. Of course, it won't have everything covered. So it reserves the right to exclude works should an irate rightsholder emerge from the woodwork. But its users are indemnified for use before the work was excluded. The not-for-profit charges fees which are funnelled back to the music publishers, musicians etc according to some mutually-satisfactory formula (typically, a formula that is equally unsatisfactory to all the interest groups) and are used to underwrite the indemnity.

I don't think it would be tax-deductible though. There is also a tricky, but not insurmountable competition aspect to it.

.
Edward Barrow
New Media Copyright Consultant
http://www.copyweb.co.uk/
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