{"id":9193,"date":"2011-05-06T09:30:28","date_gmt":"2011-05-06T13:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=9193"},"modified":"2011-05-06T09:30:28","modified_gmt":"2011-05-06T13:30:28","slug":"the-orphan-works-gap-in-us-copyright-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/05\/06\/the-orphan-works-gap-in-us-copyright-law\/","title":{"rendered":"The “orphan works” gap in US copyright law"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nicole Ciandella<\/a> writes about so-called “orphan works” under current US copyright law:<\/p>\n

\n

Jazz enthusiasts rejoiced when the National Jazz Museum in Harlem purchased the famous Savory Collection last year, but unless Congress fixes a gaping hole in U.S. copyright laws, few people will actually hear the prized recordings.<\/p>\n

William Savory was an audio engineer who developed his own method of recording live audio performances in the late 1930s. Up until World War II, most live performances were recorded on 78 rpm records that could capture only about three minutes of music. But Savory used 12- and 16-inch aluminum discs, which enabled him to create and store high quality recordings of longer performances. His collection includes a six-minute version of Coleman Hawkins performing \u201cBody and Soul\u201d in the spring of 1940 and a recording of Billie Holliday singing a rubato-tempo version of \u201cStrange Fruit\u201d in a nightclub only a month after her original version was released.<\/p>\n

While he was alive, Savory kept his recordings mostly to himself. He died in 2004. His son, who inherited the recordings, finally agreed last year to sell the whole Savory Collection to the National Jazz Museum.<\/p>\n

Museum spokespeople say the museum is eager to share the songs with the public online, but because of the recordings\u2019 murky copyright status, that\u2019s unlikely to happen anytime soon. The performances Savory recorded are now considered \u201corphan works\u201d — in other words, their copyright owners are unknown and cannot be tracked down. The museum can\u2019t obtain permission to disseminate the recordings; and if the museum were to go ahead without permission, it would risk being hit with a copyright infringement lawsuit, meaning potentially hefty civil penalties.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nicole Ciandella writes about so-called “orphan works” under current US copyright law: Jazz enthusiasts rejoiced when the National Jazz Museum in Harlem purchased the famous Savory Collection last year, but unless Congress fixes a gaping hole in U.S. copyright laws, few people will actually hear the prized recordings. William Savory was an audio engineer who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,28,15,13],"tags":[135,349,200],"class_list":["post-9193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law","category-media","category-technology","category-usa","tag-copyright","tag-jazz","tag-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-2oh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9193"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9194,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9193\/revisions\/9194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}