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posted by LaminatorX on Saturday December 20 2014, @05:26AM   Printer-friendly
from the vault dept.

Victoria Shannon writes in the NYT that fifty years ago was a good year for music with the Beatles appearing on Billboard’s charts for the first time, the Rolling Stones releasing their first album, the Supremes with five No. 1 hits and Simon and Garfunkel releasing their debut album. The 50-year milestone is significant, because music published within the first half-century of its recording gets another 20 years of copyright protection under changes in European law. So every year since 2012, studios go through their tape vaults to find unpublished music to get it on the market before the deadline.

The first year, Motown released a series of albums packed with outtakes by some of its major acts, and Sony released a limited-edition collection of 1962 outtakes by Bob Dylan, with the surprisingly frank title, “The Copyright Extension Collection, Vol. I.” In 2013, Sony released a second Dylan set, devoted to previously unreleased 1963 recordings. Similar recordings by the Beatles and the Beach Boys followed. This year, Sony is releasing a limited-edition nine-LP set of 1964 recordings by Dylan, including a 46-second try at “Mr. Tambourine Man,” which he would not complete until 1965. The Beach Boys released two copyright-extension sets of outtakes last week. And while there's no official word on a Beatles release, last year around this time, “The Beatles Bootleg Recordings 1963” turned up unannounced on iTunes.

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  • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday December 20 2014, @06:07AM

    by aristarchus (2645) on Saturday December 20 2014, @06:07AM (#127680) Journal

    Maybe I am the last member standing on Soylent News, but this is just too ironic to pass up. The "Copyright Extention Collection"? OK, Bob is dead. In fact, if you know the history, it is not the first time.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 20 2014, @06:08AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 20 2014, @06:08AM (#127681)

      Can you clarify what you mean for those of us who are not Dylan obsessives?

      • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday December 20 2014, @06:58AM

        by aristarchus (2645) on Saturday December 20 2014, @06:58AM (#127689) Journal

        Several points. Folk scene in the early sixties, Dylan was one of the first to go "electronic". Some time later, poor Bob decided to become a Christian. Death for a jew. And now? Who knows. And, who cares? Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act of when Disney needed it, as well. Karma in intellectual property is a bitch, as I recall.

        • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday December 20 2014, @05:17PM

          by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Saturday December 20 2014, @05:17PM (#127774) Homepage Journal

          Well, I don't believe in karma, but IMO Sony got what they've deserved and whoever fucked up their systems has my thanks; Sony's XCP malware fucked one of my computers up.

          Even though I hold registered copyrights (one came in the mail yesterday), or maybe because I do, I say copyrights are WAY too long. They hinder creativity. Example: I would have liked to include the lyrics to two songs off of "Dark Side of the Moon" in the article "Dork Side of the Moon" (it's a true story about an attempted murder on a night with a total lunar eclipse) in an upcoming book, but its songwriter is dead and I have no way of knowing who holds the rights so I could get permission to use it. Those songs are 40 years old and should be in the public domain by now.

          Sony Bono is surely burning in hell right now. I'd like to visit his grave so I could piss on it. Damned whores...

          --
          mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
  • (Score: 2) by TGV on Saturday December 20 2014, @08:06AM

    by TGV (2838) on Saturday December 20 2014, @08:06AM (#127692)

    Why do they do that? Just in case someone was going to publish these recordings, that have been hidden for 50 years? It surely can't affect the copyright period of the recordings released 50 years ago.

    • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday December 20 2014, @08:43AM

      by aristarchus (2645) on Saturday December 20 2014, @08:43AM (#127696) Journal

      Point being, they weren't released then, but the fact that they are released now means the clock starts again. Except for those of us, and our numbers are growing exponentially (It is a math thing, you will have to look it up, if you are in marketing or intellectual property rights!) who do not recognize such hackneyed attempt to pervert the law, its original intention, and all that is human, holy, and sentient in the universe! We will come! Expect us! We actually are not that into you, and your lame analog tapes of stuff that was cool fifty years ago. But if we were, we would just download it off a torrent site, thank you much. And again, we are just not that into you. (Get your goddamned Bono off my friggen device, please?)

      • (Score: 1) by soylentsandor on Saturday December 20 2014, @09:05AM

        by soylentsandor (309) on Saturday December 20 2014, @09:05AM (#127701)

        Interesting point. Add to that the fact that the cost of releasing these old recordings in the internet age is a fraction of what it would have been a mere 10 or 20 years ago, it means almost certain profit.

    • (Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday December 20 2014, @08:30PM

      by frojack (1554) on Saturday December 20 2014, @08:30PM (#127817) Journal

      Just in case someone was going to publish these recordings,...

      I was asking myself the same thing. Most of this was shit, outtakes nobody saw fit to publish in the past, probably second or third class work that the artists didn't want out there.

      The holders could have released it any time in the past, and still had the only copies of this stuff and could have released it any time in the future. Whenever it was released it would enjoy a copyright. (The actual recording date does not matter, and even if you could make a case that it DID matter, the editing and compilation would still be copyrightable).

      This seems purely a money grab with second class goods.

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 21 2014, @07:11AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 21 2014, @07:11AM (#127946)

    cry moar?