My thought was that the simple solution would work
best:
All materials go to a non-profit (Smithsonian was mentioned as a good example.) with quit claim by the studio. Then, the nonprofit could undertake restoration and preservation work with no strings attached. Licensing would require that the requestor make a best effort to untangle the knot, and allow for unfound rightsholders to step up within a reasonable time.
The makers of "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou" paid a lump sum to the former chain gang member who wrote and sung the opening song to that movie. He didn't even remember it being recorded. These knots can be traced when the effort is put in.
keith
--- Edward Barrow <edward[_at_]copyweb.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
> 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/
> ***Important: see
> http://www.copyweb.co.uk/email.htm for information
> about the legal status of this email ***
>
>
>
#############################################################
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.2.0 : Mon Mar 26 2007 - 00:35:49 GMT