The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

So I recently posted a video of Ben Bernie's "Sweet Georgia Brown" on black Vocalion (also found it in brown shellac). The copyright on the song itself came due in January I think? Last January? Anyway, the song itself is now in the public domain.

Regardless, It was immediately flagged for copyright but allowed to stay up. I hit "Dispute" as I didn't want someone else putting ads up on my videos. It turns out that some company called Dance all Day (I think they are a distributor out of Germany), had flagged this as their property. I argued that this was not some Time-life collection and that I was not using someone else's remastered re-recording that I was in fact using the actual 100 year old shellac to make my video and I was pretty sure nobody owned it.

Within 4 hours I then got a notification from YouTube that Dance all Day was sticking to their guns, they felt like they owned this recording of Sweet Georgia Brown and were not going to relinquish the rights. YouTube gave me the option to file an appeal but warned that if I was found in the wrong it would put a flag on my account and three such marks could lead to my channel being taken down. I appealed anyway as I know I'm in the right here but I was still a bit put-out at the fact that I was being warned and wondering how many wrongful copyright flags a company was allowed to issue without them getting flagged?

Anyway, a day later this is what I got back;

"Good news! After reviewing your dispute, Dance all Day has decided to release their copyright claim on your YouTube video.

Video title: ""Sweet Georgia Brown" by Ben Bernie and His Hotel Roosevelt Orchestra on Vocalion 15002 Side B"

- The YouTube Team"

So moral of the day, just keep fighting... there's a lot of people out there making a lot of money because folks are being forced pretty hard to stand up for themselves and some find it easier to just roll over...

Oh, and just for reference, here's the recording https://youtu.be/FFE2m05YqjI

Good going! Thank you.

I checked Wikipedia and the composition of Sweet Georgia Brown was written in 1925, which means it entered the public domain in the USA this year. However the sound recording itself is still subject to copyright protection in the USA because only pre-1923 sound recordings became PD this year. I have no idea who the legitimate owner of the Vocalion masters would be.

Interestingly, under EU rules, the reverse is true - the sound recording is public domain because it is more than 70 years old, and the composition is under copyright because the copyright lasts 70 years after the death of the last living author, which in this case won't be until 2032. If Dance All Day is indeed a German company, they may have a legitimate claim, at least for the EU.

Having dealt with that stuff in the past I can give my two cents on the EU side, especially in its German incarnation here:

The copyright has indeed expired after 70 years + the rest of the last year. For example, a recording made in March of 1940 expired on 1 Jan 2011, not March 2010. Aside from that, there are ancillary copyrights that have also expired.

The composer rights are indeed last 70 years after the death of the last living author. In the EU, there are several royalty agencies in place that handle these matters. In Germany, it is usually GEMA (acc. to §10 Urheberrechtsgesetz) and YouTube has a standing contract with them.

Based on all that, "Dance All Day" has no ground to stand on, at least within the EU. To my knowledge, there is no legal way for them to own any of these copyrights themselves. Unlike in the US, here in Germany a copyright cannot be sold or surrendered, only inherited.

It indeed smells, yet again, strongly after what we all know as copyfraud. YouTube has implemented that system that makes it possible in the first place. To me, this nothing else but corporate criminal activity.


Just checked their website. Their cookie pop-up policy is illegal as well. It only gives me three options to "Leave side", "More information", and "I consent". They are legally required to have the option to reject cookies as well. So, without "I consent" one cannot even lookup their legal contact info:

https://www.dance-all-day.com/

DANCE ALL DAY Musicvertriebs GmbH
Raiffeisenstr. 4
83377 Vachendorf / Traunstein
Germany

If the song is in the public domain, it's subject to the same rights as in private law. Not at all, it belongs to the state or the production center or someone else, but not to the people who can use it to monetize the channel. Absurd, I think there should be a tax on the use of songs... I also run my own channel and never publish anything that isn't mine, especially intellectual property. If I need to market my channel, I buy real youtube views. Same with copyrights - there's a license to rent and use as well as buy