The "Stereo Public Domain" Project ================================== Summary: -------- Recordings from the early days of stereo are now coming into the public domain, because many European countries have a copyright term of 50 years for master rights in sound recordings. (The compositions themselves are often already in the public domain, so master rights are the main concern here, not mechanical rights.) QuestionCopyright.org has identified a donor with an extensive collection of such recordings on CD and LP, who has them already catalogued in an electronic database with the date and location each recording was made. A preliminary examination of the database indicates that between 5,000 and 10,000 individual pieces of music could be released to the public. The donor is willing to make the collection available for this purpose. Usefulness for Opposing Proposed EU Copyright Extension: -------------------------------------------------------- We want to release the recordings as soon as possible because there is legislation proposed in the Europe Union Parliament to retroactively extend copyright terms for sound recordings [1]. The legislation has already passed initial procedural hurdles, and is set to go before the Council of Ministers [2]. If we can get these recordings out and publicized before the legislation passes, then the legislation would be taking away something people already have -- something concrete would be lost. But if we do not release the recordings first, then we cannot legally release them at all, and the loss would be much less palpable. Opposition would be harder because the legislation's harm would be less immediately apparent. Due to this urgency, we would release recordings as they are ready (unless advised to to wait and release them all at once, in order not to stimulate the legislation to move faster -- fortunately, we have an MEP who can help us with that question). Draft Budget: ------------- $3k Legal research to determine extent of public domain (Are the recordings also public domain in the U.S.? Is location of recording decisive, or is it location of first publication? Etc, etc. We have a lawyer with experience in international copyright law, but we cannot ask her to do this much work pro bono. If we can get pro bono help elsewhere, this number could go down.) $3k Research to determine the exact set of recordings that can be liberated in this particular collection (basically, looking carefully at the metadata.) $1k Mass CD ripper machine (they can be rented, see [3] below). $1k 4 or 5 TB worth of good portable drives. (The Internet Archive may be able to lend these, Tracey Jaquith implied, in which case this is $0). $.3k Replacement needles for donor's turntable (we can use his equipment to digitize LPs, but we should supply the needles). $10k One competent intern for appx 50 working days (someone comfortable with the hardware, and knowledgeable about classical music) @ $200/day. The equipment will stay at the donor's house, and the intern will go there to do the copying. $6k Administrative costs: finding the intern, ordering the hardware, organizing the data, publicizing results, etc. Total: appx $25k Output: 5000-10000 liberated recordings, plus infrastructure for receiving more (via crowdsourcing), along with published legal guidelines so other collectors can easily determine which old recordings can be released. Audience and Allies: -------------------- In the European Parliament, we have a good working relationship with newly-elected MEP Rick Falkvinge of Sweden. Falkvinge opposes the proposed legislation, and may be able to use this project as an argument to the constituents of enough other legislators to at least delay the legislation's progress, and possibly to block it entirely. We are already in contact with the Music Librarians Association (US) about the EU legislation; they are an obvious choice for spreading the recordings themselves as well. We intend to coordinate the recordings with the data at free public domain sheet music sites as well (see [4]). Finally, the release of such a large amount of classical music will be very useful for music educators and for artists who incorporate music into their own works (filmmakers, playwrights, musicians and other performers). We intend to spread knowledge of the collection widely, and to gather testimonials and evidence about how the recordings are used. Contact: -------- Karl Fogel References: ----------- [1] The EU Parliament press release about this: http://tinyurl.com/bopqf7 And the draft legislation itself, as released from the Legal Affairs Committee: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/file.jsp?id=5667672 See also http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2008:0464:FIN:EN:HTML [2] http://soundcopyright.eu/ http://www.openrightsgroup.org/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kijON_XODUk [3] http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2008/06/11/primera-offers-$299/week-rental-cd-ripping-machine http://thomashawk.com/2006/01/sony-may-offer-standalone-200-disc.html [4] Mutopia (www.mutopiaproject.org) International Music Score Library Project (imslp.org) Choral Public Domain Library (cpdl.org) Werner Icking Archive (icking-music-archive.org) Project Gutenberg (gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:The_Sheet_Music_Project) Etc.