Why the Future of Digital Music May Depend on Elvis
It wasn’t all that long ago that the notion of music whipping around the planet at the speed of light in the form of zeroes and ones was completely inconceivable. No one–including lawyers specializing in copyright and intellectual property–could have anticipated the challenges that would arise.
Technology is far, far ahead of the law which means that various corrections, modifications and adaptations are desperately needed. One of the more interesting battles involves music that was made prior to 1972.
Why 1972? Why is there such massive concern over the Beatles, the Stones, Elvis Presley and everyone else who released music before that date> The Quartz has a very good article that explains the situation. It’s definitely worth a read.
Just to confuse things a bit more, publishing companies and record companies are often part of the same corporation (For example, Sony, Universal, and Warner all have recording and publishing arms), but individual songs don’t necessarily have the same ultimate corporate parent for composition and recording rights.
Compositions have been protected by US federal copyright laws since the 1800′s.Sound recordings only became protected in 1972, around the time that technology—notably, good-quality cassette tapes—made it possible to bootleg music at scale.But this change was never applied retroactively, so recordings made before 1972 aren’t protected.
See what I mean? And it gets even more interesting. Keep reading.
