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by tablespoon 1738 days ago
> Here’s what triggered this: The ceremony includes bits of a recording (of tenor John McCormack singing “Funiculi, Funicula”) made in the year 1914. The Corporate Takedown

> YouTube’s takedown algorithm claims that the following corporations all own the copyright to that audio recording that was MADE IN THE YEAR 1914: “SME, INgrooves (on behalf of Emerald); Wise Music Group, BMG Rights Management (US), LLC, UMPG Publishing, PEDL, Kobalt Music Publishing, Warner Chappell, Sony ATV Publishing, and 1 Music Rights Societies”

So what's going on here? Did some record company reissue the song later on CD, so YouTube is treating it like it was released at a later date than it was?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain_in_the_United_St...:

> All works first published or released before January 1, 1926, have lost their copyright protection, effective January 1, 2021.

Google probably should compile a list of public domain recordings to act as a blacklist for YouTube copyright claims. Maybe that should even be legal a requirement for such automatic enforcement systems. If they partner with some library or national archive, such a project could help with media preservation efforts.

2 comments

> All works first published or released before January 1, 1926, have lost their copyright protection, effective January 1, 2021.

That's not the entire story. Sound recordings are a separate category, and pre-1923 sound recordings have a special clause that means they don't enter public domain until 2022.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1401

So this is WAI per current copyright laws?
I strongly suspect that Youtube makes no attempt to assess whether or not the claimed copyright is in fact in the public domain, so I wouldn't quite call it "working as intended." But, for the next few months, it's not wrong.
For now, at least until they extend it another 100 years.
> For now, at least until they extend it another 100 years.

I don't think there's the political will to keep doing that.

https://creativecommons.org/2018/01/15/copyright-term-extens...

> Google probably should compile a list of public domain recordings to act as a blacklist for YouTube copyright claims.

Should or would. Why would they be interested in that, the current situation brings them money and that's all they seem to care about.