Piteneekö tekijänoikeus 95 vuoteen?
Tekijänoikeuslain suoja on perinteisesti ollut voimassa 50 vuotta. Kirjailijoiden, säveltäjien ja muiden varsinaisten ”tekijöiden” suoja lasketaan kuolinvuoden päättymisestä, äänitteiden suoja ensimmäisestä julkaisusta. Vuonna 1995 Euroopan Unioni päätti pidentää teosten suoja-ajan 70 vuoteen. Tällöin Suomessakin vuosien 1925 ja 1945 välillä kuolleiden tekijöiden teokset tulivat taannehtivasti uudelleen suojatuiksi.
Yhdysvalloissa äänitteiden suoja-aika on peräti 95 vuotta. Tämä koskee tosin vain 15.2.1972 jälkeen tehtyjä tallenteita. Tätä vanhempien äänitteiden suoja määräytyy jokaisessa osavaltiossa eri tavalla, mutta yleisesti ottaen se on huomattavan pitkä.
Tämän innoittamana äänilevytuottajien kansainvälinen järjestö IFPI on vaatinut, että äänitteiden suoja-aika EU:ssa tulisi myös pidentää 95 vuoteen, muuten eurooppalaisen äänilevyteollisuuden kilpailukyky romahtaa. ”The music sector groups are calling on the European Commission to close the gap with the US where performers and producers benefit from 95 years protection. As it stands, musical works by performers and producers in Europe are only protected for 50 years – a discrepancy that puts European artists and industry at a competitive disadvantage”, todetaan IFPI:n tiedotteessa 15.10.2005.
IFPI unohtaa mainita, että taiteilijat ja tuottajat nauttivat Euroopan Unionissa monilla tavoin vahvempaa suojaa kuin Yhdysvalloissa. Yhdysvalloissa ei tunneta Gramex-korvauksia, eikä HIM saa senttiäkään, jos yhtyeen levyt soivat amerikkalaisissa takseissa. Ei ole uskottavaa, että eurooppalaiset levy-yhtiöt siirtäisivät tuotantoaan Yhdysvaltoihin varmistaakseen, että ne ovat suojattuja vielä vuoden 2055 jälkeenkin. Totta kuitenkin on, että joka vuosi yksi vuosikerta levyjä ”vapautuu”. IFPI:n kampanjan kärjessä on Sir Cliff Richard, joka pelkää kohta menettävänsä royaltyt ensimmäisistä levyistään.
IFPI:n kampanjassa ei missään yhteydessä ole täsmennetty, haluavatko levytuottajat pidentää suoja-aikoja taannehtivasti, kuten vuonna 1995 tehtiin EU:ssa, vai ainoastaan tällä hetkellä suojattujen äänitteiden osalta. Taannehtiva eli retroaktiivinen pidennys voisi synnyttää painajaismaisia komplikaatiota – kuka esimerkiksi omistaisi oikeuden levyihin, jotka Matti Jurva teki Latviassa Bellaccord-yhtiölle vuonna 1935? Bellaccord siirtyi vuonna 1945 Neuvostoliiton valtiolle, eikä sen pesänjakoa ole vielä tehty.
Yhdysvalloissa pitkät suoja-ajat ovat jo johtaneet siihen, että vanhojen äänitteiden uudelleenjulkaisu on lähes kokonaan loppunut. Suuria yhtiöitä, joilla on oikeuksia vanhoihin äänitteisiin, ei kiinnosta tällainen nappikauppa. Monissa tapauksissa ei ole edes mahdollista selvittää, kenelle jonkin vuonna 1948 konkurssiin menneen yhtiön oikeudet nyt kuuluvat. Kongressin kirjasto ja Copyright office ovat huolestuneet tilanteesta, ja asiasta on tehty useita selvityksiä, jotka osoittavat selkeästi, miten ylipitkistä suoja-ajoista on enemmän haittaa kuin hyötyä.
Alla on IASA Journal –lehteen kirjoittamani arvio kansallisten kirjastojärjestöjen teettämästä Tim Brooksin selvityksestä Survey of reissues of U. S. recordings. Asian juridista puolta arvioidaan June Besekin muistiossa Copyright issues relevant to digital preservation and dissemination of pre-1972 commercial sound recordings by libraries and archives.
Pekka Gronow: Book review
Tim Brooks: Survey of reissues of U.S. recordings. Commissioned for and sponsored by the National Recording Preservation Board, Library of Congress. CLIR Reports. available from Council on Library and Information Resources, 1755 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W. Suite 500m, Washington, DC 20036
In the European Union and most other countries with functioning copyright laws, sound recordings are protected for 50 years from the year of first publication. United States copyright law uniquely grants sound recordings protection for 95 years. In addition to this, sound recordings made before 1972 may be protected perpetually by State or common law, even if the companies which produced them have ceased to exist a long time ago. This has created a situation where libraries and archives face great uncertainty when they, for instance, plan the digitisation of historical recordings.
The aim of the present survey was, first, to find out whether it is possible to determine the current owners of American sound recordings made between 1890 and 1964, and second, to calculate how many of these recordings have ever been reissued either by the legal owners or any other company. There is no discography listing all American recordings made before 1964, so the author instead used circa twenty well-known discographies covering specific areas of music, such as Tom Lord’s Jazz discography, Richard Spottswood’d Ethnic music on record, Joel Whitburns various popular music listings, Blues & gospel records by Godrich and Dixon, and The world’s encyclopedia of recorded music by Clough and Cuming. Taken together, these works list about 400,000 American recordings made before 1964, but it is important to note that they do not represent all American recordings of this period. While the coverage of jazz is nearly 100 per cent complete, large areas such as instrumental light music, wind bands and white religious music are hardly covered at all, and the coverage of popular music is largely limited to the best known and/or best-selling artists. From the contents of these discographies, the author drew a statistically representative sample of 1,521 recordings, which were investigated in detail.
The author then attempted to identify the present owners of these recordings. All records made by Decca Records, for instance, are owned today by Universal Music. However, for 16 per cent of the material, it was not possible determine a current owner. The percentage of such recordings was naturally highest for the period before 1900, but for the years 1920-1925, when there were many small record companies operating in the USA, the figure was also quite high, 34 per cent. It was possible to identify the owners of all recordings made since 1955.
It is not completely clear what actually is the legal status of recordings whose owners cannot be identified. Copyright is not extinguished when, for instance, a company goes bankrupt. For all practical purposes, however, such recordings are “orphans”. A person or institution who wishes to use such recordings for any purpose where the permission of the rights owner is required will be in a very difficult position. The problem has recently been investigated on a wider scope by the U.S. Copyright Office (see copyright.gov > orphan works).
When copyright protection in the U.S. was extended to 95 years, one of the reasons given was that the longer term would encourage the rights owners to keep the recordings available for the public. In practice this has not proven to be so. Brooks discovered that only 14 per cent of all the records covered by the study have ever been reissued on CD by the original owners. The percentages varied between different periods and different genres of music. Only a few per cent of recordings made before 1920s have ever been reissued. The most frequently reissued categories are country, classical music and popular music. Practically no ethnic recordings have been reissued.
Interestingly, it was found that other record companies have been much more active in the reissue field than the original owners, and altogether they have reissued 22 per cent of the recordings covered by the study. Many of these companies operate in Europe, where American recordings fall into public domain after 50 years, but some are small American companies which have in many cases been able to operate quite openly because the original owners frequently do not know what they own. It is important to note that the survey of reissues does not represent all American recordings made before 1964. Of the large number of recordings not listed in standard discographies, very few have ever been reissued.
It is a pity that the survey does not also attempt to find out how many historical sound recordings have actually been preserved by the owners in the form of archival copies, master tapes, or metal stampers. Even if a company owns the immaterial rights in a recording, it cannot easily reissue it unless it physically owns it. My guess would be that although most companies have fairly extensive (but not complete) archives of recordings produced since 1960s, the further back we go, the lower the percentage of archival copies will be.
Tim Brooks’ survey concentrated on reissues, because “one of the most reliable guarantees of preservation is the widespread dissemination of copies to interested individuals and archives”. In many countries, selected libraries and archives may have the right to digitise sound recordings and make them available for researchers on their premises even without the permission of the rights owners, which diminishes the risk of the total destruction and disappearance of historical recordings. However, the possibilities for such “fair use” are always limited, and there are many potential uses of such materials which are not possible for copyright reasons. The owners of the recordings seem to have no interest in reissuing and making most old recordings available, because the economic yield would be too small, but no one else can do so either.
IFPI, the International Federation of the Recording Industry has recently suggested to the European Union that the protection of sound recordings in Europe should be extended to 95 years, following the American model. While the extension would be beneficial for the very small percentage of recordings which still have commercial value after 50 years, it should be evident that it would have considerable social costs: a large part of our recorded heritage would become inaccessible.
