The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

52089 wrote:
As for remastering "rights", I always thought the concept was hogwash. If I "remaster" a Beatles album, no one in their right mind would think I owned rights to the result - the current copyright holder does. Same with public domain material, except that the copyright owner is - nobody - and therefore nobody owns the copyright on the restoration either. I find it a bit easier to believe that the Edison trademarks might still be valid, but since it's unlikely they have been in continuous use, they may have expired from lack of usage and the Edison Fund doesn't want to deal with that. I also suspect their lawyers are a lot more expensive than mine.

Remember too that copyright requires creativity, which means that restoration (from a copyright perspective), while requiring skill and effort, does not create anything "new", it simply attempts to re-create something old.

Again, this is MHO, and not intended to be legal opinion.

I'm no IP lawyer but I know that the concept of remastering rights exists, hogwash or not. So for example if Norman remasters titles in the public domain, he owns the work that goes into the remaster so nobody can copy that without his permission. If they can get the same titles from another source they are free to also remaster them but they cannot copy Norman's.

If you get approval to remaster copyrighted material, you do not normally get ownership of the copyrighted material, (like the beatles songs in your example). In this case you simply get the rights to remaster it, recompile it or whatever.

Regarding the Edison trademark, trademarks need to be used continuously and if you don't you can loose the right. If Edison did not use the Thomas A Edison signature, trademark for a period of a few years, arguably someone like Shawn Borri could take ownership by demonstrating he picked it up and used it continuously. This must be a big headache for GE if they are trying to retain this but also if I was a small operator, like Shawn it would probably be a daunting and expensive task to take on GE...

Valecnik wrote: I'm no IP lawyer but I know that the concept of remastering rights exists, hogwash or not. So for example if Norman remasters titles in the public domain, he owns the work that goes into the remaster so nobody can copy that without his permission. If they can get the same titles from another source they are free to also remaster them but they cannot copy Norman's.

In the US, for things other than sound recordings, remastering/restoration rights for public domain material may not exist as a result of a decision called Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. Quoting Wikipedia:

... exact photographic copies of public domain images could not be protected by copyright in the United States because the copies lack originality. Even if accurate reproductions require a great deal of skill, experience and effort, the key element for copyrightability under U.S. law is that copyrighted material must show sufficient originality.

What the above means is that if I take a picture of the Mona Lisa and publish it, anyone is free to use it for any purpose without consulting me or paying me royalties, even if I spent hours adjusting the quality of the photo. I do not know of a similar case regarding sound recordings, which are handled differently in the US for copyright purposes anyway, but I suspect the finding would be similar.

I've been following this thread and also found myself on the fence. obviously a lot of work was put into the remasters, which were then posted to youtube for anyone to freely access, rather than sold or provided to the public through some other revenue-generating means. the guy who then resposted them on his own youtube account pretty much did the same thing, offering them through his account for anyone to freely access (granted, without having done the remasters himself). it certainly would have been polite for him to indicate the source and provide credit where credit was due, so to speak. but it's not like he was taking or stealing norman's work and then trying to profit from it. from what I've seen, it seems quite common for numerous people to post to their individual youtube accounts the same music or video clips that are being posted by others, regardless of the source.

I've seen the same with all the visuals, the photographs and advertisements that people routinely post on sites like this typically without indicating or crediting the source. this certainly isn't to pass judgment let alone to denigrate the work that norman does. the so-called "public domain" can just be a complicated thing, particularly when it comes to preserving, or even defining, notions of individual credit or authorship (or perhaps in cases like this, conservatorship).

editing in a voice introduction and a short biography after the remastering is done may not make the music in the soundfile re-copyrightable but may make it easire to cliam ownership to the remastered work itself. Then, if someone edits out the intro and lead out they may not destroy ownership of the original work(where copyright is of no question, especially if it is of recognized public domain) but the rights to the remastering work involved would clearly be infringed upon if copyright laws to the remastered work apply.

It is one thing to repost or add another's work to youtube wether they politely asked or not. It is entirely another to edit out portions of their work and claim it as their own.

Sansenoi wrote:editing in a voice introduction and a short biography after the remastering is done may not make the music in the soundfile re-copyrightable but may make it easire to cliam ownership to the remastered work itself. Then, if someone edits out the intro and lead out they may not destroy ownership of the original work(where copyright is of no question, especially if it is of recognized public domain) but the rights to the remastering work involved would clearly be infringed upon if copyright laws to the remastered work apply.

It is one thing to repost or add another's work to youtube wether they politely asked or not. It is entirely another to edit out portions of their work and claim it as their own.

but none of that happened here, right? at least, that's what I thought.

You're probably right, after watching this thread myself for a while I did some research for anyone who may think they have some audio that is copyrightable.

the link is here: http://www.metois.com/Eymwatermark/eymawmgui.htm
it is software that allows you to add a digital watermark to an audio file to protect from copyright infringement.

Be aware though, if you add a watermark saying you own a copyright to some material that is questionable as to if someone else owns a standing copyright you have opened yourself to an undeniable lawsuit from them.

Just to clarify though, I was making more of a suggestion for future work to avoid this problem in the above posts.

One more thing to note, since the person probably ripped the audio, the audio watermark may not stand if transfered to video but, if they used the video of someone else playing the music in question it is no longer a question of audio copyright infringement but of video which is much easier to document ownership. It's hard to claim in court that a video of a phonograph playing a song is your own when it is another phonograph and living room in which it was recorded.

On the other hand, if all the screen shows is a title and and blue screen when the music plays it makes it harder to prove the audio was stolen.

The audio watermarking software mentioned above says it will stand up to cross platform ripping in some cases so, if a questionable case actually made it to court, the defendant would be asked to produce their original masters used which would probably contain the watermark if added wether the video was in question or not.