[rollei_list] Re: Copyright Law - in France and the EU

  • From: Emmanuel Bigler <Emmanuel.Bigler@xxxxxxxx>
  • To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:21:42 +0100

Hello from France
Sorry to interfere in this discussion about copyright laws in the US, I cannot be of any help ; however since John Wild from the UK mentions the British Performing Rights Society "PRS" I dare to add some comments about the author's rights of a well-know piece of music : Ravel's Bolero.

This used to be one of the most profitable piece of French music (or even : _the_ most profitable piece of classical music of the XX-st century not in the public domain), and the history of who owns the rights today would in itself deserve hundreds of pages. To put things simply, there were conflicts bewteen the French copyright law and the (future ??) unified European copyright law.

Peoplo who have created the French wikipedia entry about Ravel's Bolero
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bol%C3%A9ro_(Ravel)
have a long and complex discussion about the simple question:

 _as of 2009, is Ravel's Bolero in the public domain or not ?_

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussion:Bol%C3%A9ro_(Ravel)

Different approaches : the French (actually, the French equivalent of the british PRS is named : SACEM for music) want to keep the rights on the Bolero as long as possible ; there was a peculiarity of the French copyright law allowing to extend the rights after the death of an author beyond the regular 70 years of the European law, by adding years for the two world wars. Since the European Union's law simply states that the rights are valid for 70 years after the death of the author, and since Ravel died in December 1937, according to the European law, the Bolero is, or at least should be, in the Public Domain since January 2008.
But in France for some reasons the rights have been extended until 2016.

And in the US if I read correclty the wikipedia discussion page pointed
above, it is 95 years after the death of the author, hence in the US the Bolero should be protected until (1937 + 95) = 2032) but apparently it is 2024 "only" ;-)

Unfortunately I did not find anything about the Bolero's author's rights in the English wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bol%C3%A9ro

---

So far : if I want to legally purchase a full score for the Bolero, I cannot get it in France except if buy the original and horrifyingly expensive original score published by Éditions Durand. This is too bad since I am a fan of Dover's full scores paperback editions of my favourite classical musicians ; for example all Bach's Orgel Werke for only $9.95, a real bargain when the Euro is rated @ $1.5 ;-);-) Ahem... there are actually some nice Dover Scores for Ravel but only those of earlier years, pre-WW-I, which are already in the public domain... Debussy is now fully in the public domain and for "Le Prélude à l'Après Midi d'un Faune" you can enjoy the famous paperbacks scores by Dover, even if (like me) you are only able to read and not actually able to play the music !

Probably I could get a copy of the Boleros' score from, say, Germany, where it should now be perfectly legal to re-publis the Bolero's score without paying a fee to Durand's rights owners. The French company Éditions Durand was bankrupted many years ago, and another company, Arima Limited based in London did actually make a fruitful living on Ravel's authors rights (mostly the Bolero) for many years ! I have no idea about the present situation....

Do I infringe copyright laws by typing this rythm :

tam---ta-ta-ta-tam---ta-ta-ta-tam---tam--tam
ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-tam !!!

In the US : yes ! in the EU ! no  ;-);-)

All the best !
--
Emmanuel



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