Little-known fact: Great song/s in public domain?

M

moonlitnite

Well-known member
Hi all,

I was watching the director's commentary for the "Android" and was surprised to hear Barry (Don) Opper and director Aaron Lipstat say that they used the hit song "Searching For My Love" (Bobby Moore) for their Indie film since the song was in the public domain! (director's commentary at 0:03:20)

It seems odd to me that neither the label nor distributors would maintain (or sell off) the copyright for a top 100 song that still has strong appeal. Regardless, I'm curious how we become aware of great music of our time finds its way in the public domain.

Please share your insights here, although I ask you not to side-track this post with general discussions on copyright infringements (except of course specific facts relating to this song).

Warm Regards,

Michael
 
Does anyone know of a place to do searches for songs in public domain? Also, there's the consideration of what part of the song is in public domain...there are normally at least two licenses for every song when you use it in a production.

Matthew
 
"......There are no sound recordings in the Public Domain in the USA. If you need a sound recording - even a recording of a public domain song - you will either have to record it yourself or license one."


http://www.pdinfo.com/
 
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Andrew,

Hardly the case - the film budget for Android was over $1,000,000 (today's dollars). I trust the directors commentary when they specifically cite a song they used is in public domain. Doing otherwise would be waiving the red flag. If you have evidence to the contrary, please provide details with links as I've done.

However, it is possible that the label associated with "Searching for my Love" was temporarily abandoned in 1982 when Android was released. Based on my research, here's the chain of ownership if this helps:

Chess Records
General Recorded Tape/Janus Records (bought in 1969)
All Platinum Records (acquired in 1975)
MCA Music Entertainment Group (resurrected in 1985)
Universal Music Group

Michael
 
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Andrew is right. The Star Spangle Banner is in the Public Domain but you can not sync the Jimi Henrix version to a movie with out a syncing license. Your little brother can lay down his own version for you to use.
 
The confusion comes about because there are often two different copyrights to consider. There's the copyright on the song itself, that is, on the words and music. And then there's the copyright on a recording on the song, which is something completely separate. A song may be in the public domain and if you perform and record it yourself there's no problem. But using someone else's recording of it runs into the copyright on that specific recording. And the term of copyright is long enough and the history of recording is short enough that I think only a relative few recordings have made it into the public domain so far - even a number of early Edison cylinders are still under copyright and some archives have run into problems because of it.
 
medeamajic said:
Andrew is right. The Star Spangle Banner is in the Public Domain but you can not sync the Jimi Henrix version to a movie with out a syncing license. Your little brother can lay down his own version for you to use.
Click to expand...


The last part of your post is correct but Andrew is still wrong. You can't use just any recording but depending on when it was recorded and a few other variables the recording might be in the public domain. If you record a song that is PD your recording is copyrighted but the song is still PD.

Since the poster really did not want to get into a copyright debate I've added some links that have a lot of information about all of that.
But the short version is that anything recorded before like 1923 I think falls into PD right now.
One reason this song might have been PD at the time and may not be any more is that the copyright law keeps changing.

I know there was a big issue where a lot of films had gone into the PD but with the change suddenly they were not free anymore because the music was back under copyright. That is what killed all those afternoon and late night movies that used to be used as free filler on american TV. And I know folks who got work replacing music on old TV shows for the same reason.

http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html

http://www.pdinfo.com/copyrt.htm
 
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The fundamental good news is that PD compositions themselves are free and clear. For example, anyone can score their film with original music by Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin or any other of the old classical masters to their heart's delight. They just have to record new versions of them unless they can find PD *recordings* as well. Few exist however, since audio recording's history is still largely within the copyright laws' age limits.
 
Noiz2 and Ted,

Thanks for sharing your perspective. Yes, I'm aware of the PD law going back to the 1920s (and Disney's successful lobbying to extend copyrights). However, the more consider the song "Searching For My Love", the more I'm convinced allowing it to lapse in public domain was a temporary oddity in the early 1980s (when Android was filmed) until another label acquired the rights. So unless someone can demonstrate to the contrary, I'm of the belief it's once again under copyright protection by the current owner.

Thanks, Michael
 
I think that's sort of what I said. Though other than changes in the law I'm not sure how it would laps into PD. You don't have to do anything to copyright a work except finish it. So it either lapsed because of expiring and then got recovered by the extension or it's still PD.
 
Noiz2 said:
The last part of your post is correct but Andrew is still wrong. You can't use just any recording but depending on when it was recorded and a few other variables the recording might be in the public domain. If you record a song that is PD your recording is copyrighted but the song is still PD.

Since the poster really did not want to get into a copyright debate I've added some links that have a lot of information about all of that.
But the short version is that anything recorded before like 1923 I think falls into PD right now.
One reason this song might have been PD at the time and may not be any more is that the copyright law keeps changing.

I know there was a big issue where a lot of films had gone into the PD but with the change suddenly they were not free anymore because the music was back under copyright. That is what killed all those afternoon and late night movies that used to be used as free filler on american TV. And I know folks who got work replacing music on old TV shows for the same reason.

http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html

http://www.pdinfo.com/copyrt.htm
Click to expand...


Okay, how can I be wrong? All I did was quote the first paragraph on www.pdinfo.com. So how can I be wrong when I posted absolutely nothing but a quote from someone else? It's in bold (second bold sentence.) in their first paragraph. What I quoted would mean there is, music and lyrics, of songs in the Public Domain, but the actual audio Sound Recordings of those Music or Lyrics is not in the Public Domain.
 
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