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Originally Posted by Farhad
Same problem in music. There are plenty of old but excellent 33LP disks which cannot be released by musicians because of crazy copyright laws which prevent the composers and/or musicians to release their old and good records.
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Angelic Upstarts did a couple of albums for Warner Bros in the late 70s. They own the rights to those recordings, but Warner Bros owns the physical tapes they were recorded onto and won't hand them over. So all the CD versions of those albums that have been released since have had to be made from a vinyl source.
Here & Now sold albums to Charley Records to fund bus repairs (they were living in a bus at the time), they got a couple of hundred pounds each for them but didn't notice they were selling all rights to them in pertuity. They don't get anything at all from the CD releases from Charley, and can't legally do anything else with them.
You could say it's their own fault for being so naive, but when you're young and someone waves a fist full of money in front of you and promises fame and fortune I doubt many people would look too closely at what they're signing. You certainly wouldn't be worried about any future income you might need when you're in your 50s.