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Orchestra To Turn Copyright-Free Classical Scores Into Copyright-Free Music
destinyland writes "An online music site has raised over $13,000 to hire a full orchestra to record royalty-free classical music. ('"Although the actual symphonies are long out of copyright, there is separate protection for every individual performance by an orchestra," notes one technology site.') MusOpen has reached their fundraising goal for both the orchestra and a recording facility, and will now record the complete symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Sibelius and Tchaikovsky. And because their fundraising deadline doesn't end until Tuesday, they've promised to add additional recordings for every additional $1,000 raised."
Every quality song that is released to the public domain makes a future where it will be slightly more difficult for the RIAA to survive. Is there be a more noble cause anywhere on this planet?
Why aren't they doing what broadway did? They can replace the musicians with synthesizers and record MORE music to protect copyrights.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
While I certainly applaud what they're doing, I just wanted to point out that classical music is generally about the quality of the performances themselves. So what orchestra are they hiring? How much practice/exposure to some of these pieces will they have? Will they be sight-reading some of them? It will be nice to have recordings out there that are free of any copyright issues, but it won't mean much if the performances are mediocre or have glaring mistakes (wrong notes, missed entrances, etc). I'm curious if anyone has asked any city/community or college orchestras if they'd be interested in releasing some of their recordings into the public domain.
Under U.S. law, these commissioned works won't be in the public domain. There is no way to "create" a work into the public domain. Work only enters the public domain upon expiration of the copyright term. (The one way to create a work into the public domain, is that governmental works are not subject to copyright.)
What the project can do is create a contractual license that says that all-comers are granted a perpetual, non-exclusive license. Even then, presumably the resulting works would be works of joint authorship, with copyright residing in all of the authors. And under the reversion provisions of US copyright law, those orchestra members, or their families, could have the licenses terminated after about 30 years.
Pretend I said something meaningful or insightful here.
I thought there was an extensive library of high-quality copyright-free classical music recorded by Soviet, Eastern-bloc, and Chinese orchestras prior to 1989. None of those countries were Berne Convention signatories at the time and no copyright was ever claimed nor desired since they were "the people's" orchestras performing for the people. If I remember correctly, Muzak used to use Czech orchestral performances as they were copyright-free in the 70s and 80s. Why not use those recordings?
>I don't think the media industry can possibly be sufficiently significant donor
You sir have an out-sized idea of how little it actually takes to purchase a politician.