* Outdated copyright music posed to flood P2P networks
Have you been noticing more 1950s era bootleg recordings up on file sharing sites recently? If not, you may be finding more soon.
Unlike U.S. copyright laws that extend for 95 years, music governed by European and Canadian copyright enter the public domain after only 50 years. Recordings of musicians playing early rock and jazz from the 1950s are now becoming legal to download – but only if you are doing it from outside the U.S.
Of course it will be difficult for copyright holders to pinpoint people who are downloading this music from inside the U.S., further frustrating efforts by the music industry to stamp out file trading networks. The entertainment industry is already attempting to stretch its legal jurisdiction to reach companies and individuals outside the U.S.
Attempts have been made to shut down overseas Web sites offering copyrighted material and sue foreign-based companies, like Sharman Networks operator of the Kazaa file trading system.
According to Nielsen/NetRatings figures, 6.4 million people in Europe visited Kazaa’s Web site in October. But so far there has been no big rush to download music that has fallen out of copyright. It’s just a matter of time, however, before people begin creating archives of material that resides in the public domain in one part of the world, and yet is illegal to download from the U.S.
The entertainment industry could trace access to this type of archive by forcing ISPs to turn over log information. Or they could follow the lead of the Recording Industry Association of America, which pressured an U.S. backbone network provider to block user access to a site in China that offered downloads of allegedly copyrighted music on MP3 files. The exact legality of this request was never determined because the site disappeared before a judge could rule on the issue.
But the entertainment industry really has no legal leverage over people posting public domain material for download unless they can convince European countries to extend their copyright laws. Fortunately, European Union copyright rules have upheld the 50-year limit and individual countries have resisted pressure to fall in line with the U.S. law.
Let’s hope that the Europeans continue to value widespread access to the world’s cultural treasures and place these recordings in the public domain as their copyright runs out. Imagine how exciting it will be when music from the early 1960s is released to anyone who wants to sample and remix it to create something completely and refreshingly new.
