Melodia records

[Alex Rudd]

On Thu, 29 Jun 2000 21:15:08 -0500 Michael A. Denner said:
>Who currently holds the property rights on recordings from the Melodia
>label? I know that Melodia was bought by Angel out of
>Britain, but there the story ends for me.

Michael,

It's not going to be as simple as that.

First, by "property rights," I'm assuming you're referring to
Copyright and whether you can make use and/or copies of works
first published by Melodiya.

You're probably going to have to check on a recording by
recording basis.  My sense of it, having just done a few
searches of the records at the Copyright Office on the
Internet and browsed the web, is that the history involved
has made the answer into a quagmire.

For one thing, Melodiya licensed at least part of its
catalog to BMG Music back in 1994.  For another, Capitol
Records was in a recording agreement with Mezhdunarodnaya
Kniga (which was the official State recording agency),
under which Capitol released some recordings from MK
under the "Melodiya/Angel" label and distributed them
via Angel Records.

Maybe you should check with BMG and Capitol Records with
regards to any recording you want to use and see if they
claim any rights in it.

If you feel like doing a search in the United States, the
Copyright Office has its records on-line:

http://www.loc.gov/copyright/rb.html

Of course, depending on what you want to do, there are enough
exceptions to the Copyright law (e.g. Fair Use) that you might
not even need to get permission.

If you're a professor and want to play the music in class,
then you will want to know that you can do that without
infringing per 17 U.S.C. 110(1), which says:

"Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106 which enumerate
the rights of a copyright ownerÙ, the following are NOT emphasis
addedÙ infringements of copyright:

     performance or display of a work by instructors or pupils
     in the course of face-to-face teaching activities of a nonprofit
     educational institution, in a classroom or similar place devoted
     to instruction, unless, in the case of a motion picture or other
     audiovisual work, the performance, or the display of individual
     images, is given by means of a copy that was not lawfully made
     under this title, and that the person responsible for the
     performance knew or had reason to believe was not lawfully made;

<snip>"

Hope that helps a little.

- Alex, list owner of SEELANGS    seelangs-request at listserv.cuny.edu
....................................................................
Alex Rudd                ahrjj at cunyvm.cuny.edu            ARS KA2ZOO
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