Comment by kmeisthax | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kmeisthax | Hacker News Reader

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In this case BMG might have a claim to ownership over the recording in question for the next 3 months... in the US.

In the US, sound recordings used to be handled under state copyright law. That's a phrase which should give any lawyer younger than 60 an aneurysm, as there is no such thing today - sound recording rights were brought into federal law in the 1970s, and preemption[0][1] means that states can't extend copyright law at all anymore. However, the actual recordings weren't properly grandfathered into federal law until 2018 with the passage of the MMA[2], which includes concepts from the CLASSICS Act[3].

Under the MMA, pre-federal sound recordings get a new copyright term on a sliding scale, with the lowest term length being 3 years for recordings made before 1923. Since the MMA was passed in 2018, those new terms expire... this January.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_preemption

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/301

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_Modernization_Act

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLASSICS_Act

What most likely happened is this old recording appeared within a more modern copyrighted recording--on a compilation CD, or even in the background of a movie soundtrack.

Assuming there is no current legal rights holder for this recording, I firmly believe that companies that falsely assert their rights should be held criminally liable for theft.

And here, we run into the other side of the problem with the automated takedown system as YouTube has it implemented currently: there's no human-in-the-loop confirmation step.

So at present: owner tags some content as owned by them, content is fingerprinted, YouTube does similarity-matching, content that is similar gets flagged for takedown until the uploader intervenes. It's certainly not fair to hold the content owner accountable for false-positives any more than it's fair to hold the uploader.

(Now, in cases where the uploader pushes the "This content is legit" button and the content owner responds with the "no it isn't" button, I'd be very much in favor of incentives changing so an error at that point on the part of the content owner gets them raked over the coals. But there's no real legal mechanism for that to happen right now. Remember, this entire process exists as an alternative to the content owner's legal option: to sue YouTube or to sue individual YouTube users. YouTube doesn't want that).

So did this act assign copyrights for recordings that had already fallen into the public domain? That doesn't seem right. Or is this only for recordings that had existing copyrights?

It may not seem right, but it wouldn't be the first time.

For example It's a Wonderful Life went into the public domain in 1974 when copyright registration was not renewed. After which it became popular on TV. But it went back under copyright when the USA signed the Berne Convention in 1989. And starting in 1993 Republic Pictures began collecting royalties from TV networks that showed it.

Oh wow. This is the first time I've heard of this being possible. Fascinating.

I'm curious, how did re-copyrighting impact the legal status of (possibly hypothetical) works derived from _It's a Wonderful Life_ during its in the public domain?

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