--- In LPFM_Radio@..., "philip_crookes" <philip@c...>
wrote:
> --- In LPFM_Radio@..., "Richard Phelps"
> <retrohitradio@p...> wrote:
> > Interesting topic. This would have little to do with copyright law =
> > You can broadcast any programme be it 5 days or 50 years old, as long
> > as you've paid for the right to do so.
> >
> > Breaking Copyright law is altering the material by way of
repackaging,
> > re-recording or sampling, right?

Wrong. Copyright assigns certain rights to the copyright holder.
Essentially a right of ownership where they can determine what you
can do with it. You can't simply rebroadcast (unchanged or not) a
show you recorded from 3 years ago (in fact you're not even permitted
to record that show except for a short time shifting for personal
listening). [In fact re-transmission is explictly permitted in NZ
under certain conditions...]

> Well, yes and no. Copyright is broken if you reproduce (either by
> copoying or broadcasting) something you didn't create yourself or
> don't have the rights to unbless it is out of copyright.
>
> Anything that is 'out of copyright', said to be in the "public domain'
> can be broadcast free of charge, without payment.

Yup.

> In NZ, the copyright on broadcast programmes and sound recordings runs
> out fifty years after the end of the year the programme or recording
> was first published.

Yup, but... see below...

> We need only consider NZ law here, because the copyright laws of other
> countries do not apply here, any more than any of their other laws. NZ
> gives the same copyright protection to material produced abroad as it
> would have if it had been produced here.

Yup.

> That means that some of the popular recordings of the 1950s -
> Presley, Bill Haley etc - are now starting to move into the public
> domain, and that some classic radio shows like Dad & Dave, the early
> Goon Shows before 1955, American serials like Dragnet and Box 13, are
> all Public Domain as far as NZ copyright goes. And that should mean
> that they can be freely broadcast without payment of royalties by
> small or large radio stations here.

Yes but.... see below...

> BBC threatened the Australian Goon show site by claiming that BBC
> owned the trademark The Goon Show, though it is not listed in the UK
> Patent Office list of registered tradmarks, in which Goons are the
> trademark of a kind of chocolate biscuit. Nor is it clear what
> difference their ownership of such a trademark would make unless one
> were presenting something that wasn't the Goon Show but claimed it was.

Yup...they were on a losing battle here...
>
> They also maintained that the scripts were subject to a different
> copyright regime. The issue then is whether that separate copyright in
> the scripts - and in the music heard during the show - requires
> separate payment or not.

Here they are right....sadly...

> I believe I'm entitled to broadcast 50 year old recordings by Bill
> Haley & Elvis Presley without additional payment.

Nope....see below...

> But I'm not entitled
> to re-record the songs with other performers without paying the
> appropriate royalties for the words and music.

Correct.

> And on that analogy I should be free to re-broadcast the Goon Shows or
> any other 50-year-old programme.
>
> I'm still thinking about it.
>
> All advice and opinion welcomed,

Sorry...no opinions. Just facts. :-)

The important concept to grasp is that a work may have more than
one copyright holder. Consider the book "The Hitch-Hikers Guide to
the Galaxy". Consider I get copyright permission from the estate of
Douglas Adams to publish a revised copy with a new chapter I wrote.
Who owns the copyright in this new book? Both me, and Douglas' Adams
estate. When does copyright expire? 50 years after Douglas' death?
Only for the bits he wrote. You can take the bits he wrote in 2053
but that new chapter and that new edition as a whole - hands off for
(I hope) another 70 years at least... :-)

Now I persuade Enya to let me use Orinoco Flow on the CD-ROM version
of the upgraded Hitch-Hikers book - now there are three separate
copyright owners to deal with. (The operating system Linux has about
15,000 copyright owners, each of whom you would need to get agreement
to do something with Linux like change the terms of any licence).

So Bill Hayley - the broadcast is free of copyright in NZ, BUT the
composer and the performer both retain a separate copyright. Sounds
stupid, but that's what the law says and that's what the courts have
ruled in exactly these cases. So even the incidental music in the Goon
Show can catch you out. Maybe you can edit it out.

So when is a broadcast free and clear. Well you can wait until
everyone associated has been dead for 50 years. OR broadcasts without
musical or dramatic content that is separately copyright. So for
example yes you can rebroadcast a 1954 broadcast of Hamlet. You can't
rebroadcast a 1954 broadcast of Death of a Salesman. You can't
rebroadcast Orson Welles's 1938 War of the World's because even though
HG Wells Copyright has expired, Orson Welles adapted it so it's his
copyright that counts (if there was incidental music that may have an
effect too).

In summary it's a "last man standing" argument. With multiple
copyright holders the 50 year countdown doesn't start until the death
of the last composer of any dramatic/musical work included in a
broadcast. I think that's wrong. I think that's theft from the public
domain well. I think it's too long. But that's the law as it stands.