A Note on Copyright

Sound recordings were not eligible for federal copyright protection until 1972 and recordings made prior to this date are only protected by state and common-law copyright. All Edison cylinders are presumed to be in the public domain as the assets of Edison Records were transferred to the National Park Service, a federal agency. Other American sound recordings made prior 1972 may or may not be protected by state laws or common-law copyright. Foreign cylinders are all public domain in the country of production and are also presumed to be in the public domain in the United States.

The nature of the various state laws and differing interpretations of these laws in state courts means that the legal status of many early recordings is unclear. The passage of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 reiterated that all recordings made prior to February 15, 1972 are only eligible for protection under state laws until February 15, 2067, when federal law preempts state law and they enter the public domain. While the Sonny Bono law was intended primarily to extend the copyright protection to the soon-to-expire copyrights of multinational corporations and heirs to songwriters, in effect it meant that all early recordings, no matter what their commercial potential, historical importance, or availability as reissues (with the exception of Edison Recordings) may be protected for well over 150 years after their creation. This is in stark contrast to the original copyright law passed in 1790 which granted a 14-year term of copyright (renewable for another 14 years) or the copyright law in effect for other types of publications when these cylinders were recorded which granted a copyright or 28 years, renewable for another 14 year (28 years after 1909). Not a single person who composed a song recorded on these cylinders or sang into the recording horn is alive today, which suggests that the original intent of copyright to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries" has been completely usurped by the Sonny Bono law.

The raw transfers created by the University of California are in the public domain. Users of this website are free to use these raw transfers as they see fit, not limited to redistribution to others, including distribution over peer-to-peer file-sharing networks; reissue, mashups, mixes for commercial or non-commercial purposes; or other uses that could be imagined.

Restored versions of the audio files, including the downloadable MP3 files are © 2005 by the Regents of the University of California. They are licensed for non-commercial public use under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.

Acknowledgments for reuse of the transfers should read "University of California, Santa Barbara Library."

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