I had a further little thought about that Flash contraption that would like to sell you sound clips for ã1÷50. Notably, be you alive, dead or zombie, mechanical copyright in the UK is still only 50 years, which means that most of the Goon Show (1951-1960) is now out of copyright. Oops.
Except, not being a lawyer but sometimes being a reasonably good pedant with a twisted defensive mind, I've no idea whether:
To the best of my knowledge recordings have to have been officially published over 50 years ago for them to be out of copyright. Anything that may have been written before being published is a grey area, as technically it falls under copyright law, but it can be difficult to prove exactly when it was written.
Certainly in the music industry it used to be recommended that writers record their work on paper (or other media), seal it and lock it in a bank, independently witnessed. Thus if there was ever a claim against their work before being published, they could prove they wrote it at least prior to the date it was sealed in the bank. But the published date was always the official date to endorse copyright.
It gets tricky with bootleg material sometimes, as an artist could perform their work without it having been published.
However, with the original material you could now present your own version of an early Goon Show and not have to pay royalties to the authors' estates. And you could charge for it. In fact that might be a laugh for London.pm to do over a Dim Sum
Re:The second
barbie on 2008-04-28T08:53:04
Further reading of UK Copyright Law, would seem that the actual recording falls out of copyright after 50 years, but the authorship of the work survives for 70 years after the death of the last known author.
So you can play a broadcast of an original show recording without incurring any costs, but in order to perform it yourself you would need to pay Spike's estate (or whoever is credited as writer) for at least 2072. So we'll have to wait awhile for a London.pm version
;)
