On 4/29/98, Tristan Forrester <tristan_forrester[_at_]fhp.com.au> wrote:
>
> On 27 April 1998, Bob Stock <bstock[_at_]ucla.edu> wrote:
> >
> > (dealing with US law only)
> >
> > It would be a silly world that gave copyright ownership to the person
> > who physically recorded the creative work rather than the actual author
> > of that work.
>
> Isn't this the whole basis of 'mechanical' copyrights in broadcasts and
> sound recordings? Or is this different in the US?
Sound recordings and compulsory licenses gave me a headache when I studied Copyright. I have no doubt that there are others better equipped to field this question than I, but I'll give it a shot and subject myself to "abuse" if I'm wrong or imprecise.
A musical composition is copyrightable by the author(s) of the work. If a sound recording is made of that work, the owner of that sound recording is required to pay a license fee to the composition owner. In addition, the sound recording does not infringe if various elements specified in 17 U.S.C. section 115 are met. As to the sound owner's copyright rights in the sound recording itself, those are more limited than the full range of rights articulated in 106; rather, the sound owner's rights are specified in section 114.
So, in the case of a sound recording it is true that you have multiple levels of possible copyright protection, both at the original creative level and at the next level, but there are distinctions that need to be made between the sound recording process and the recording of a speech. First, the sound recording operation is significantly more creative than the simple recording of a speech, and I think this fact is recognized by giving the sound recording owner certain protections. Second, you don't have an either/or situation where you give either the musical composition owner copyright protection or the sound recording owner protection. Both are protected but in different ways. As I recall, I was responding to the possibility of the mechanic getting protection and the author of the speech not. And the truth of the matter is that the broadcast of the speech may indeed be separately copyrightable from the speech for other reasons besides the text of the speech.
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