File talk:Modest Mussorgsky - pictures at an exhibition - promenade - allegro giusto, nel modo russico senza allegrezza, ma.ogg
Copyright status of the recording (all movements)
[編集]The recording used by Wikipedia is of Maurice Ravel's orchestration, which is a recording of a rather poor performance by the Skidmore College Orchestra made available on MusOpen. While the sound recording itself may well be public domain or released under a free-access license such as Creative Commons, the 1922 orchestration by Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) is not public domain in the United States due to the fact that it was first published in 1929 by Edition Russe de Musique and duly renewed 28 years later, which means the orchestration remains under copyright in the United States until January 1, 2025. I am frankly rather amazed that the attorneys from Boosey and Hawkes (who administer the copyright in the USA) and ASCAP (who administers the performance and broadcast rights) have not hammered Wikipedia about this issue. We explain the case in some detail over at IMSLP. There is no orchestration of Pictures apart from the incomplete one made by Mikhail Tushmalov which is unambiguously free in the USA. As an almost textbook example of the absurdity of US copyright law, Ravel's orchestration is actually now free in most countries, as he died over 70 years ago. It might not be free in his native France however thanks to France's odd war-time extension to their normal 70-pma term, which extends it up to life-plus-85, except those rare composers like the organist Jehan Alain (d.1940), who was actually killed in action fighting the invading German army and thus entitled to a life-plus-100 year term.
There are always two levels of copyright to be addressed when dealing with recordings:
- The copyright status of the work being recorded; and
- The copyright status of the recording itself.