Copyright Question

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Suffice it to say: If the majors would stop 'dicking' us around with substandard DVD~Vs in Lossy codecs and start opening up their vaults and release everything in bona fide hi res, I would definitely PREFER those releases over HDDT's.....any day!

As if the music conglomerates aren't guilty themselves out of bilking their artists out of royalty payments over the years. Probably untold BILLIONS!

Let your conscience be your guide if contemplating a future purchase from HDDT.

BTW, sully....I don't notice any aberrations from utilizing tubed equipment. No hum or distortion as far as I can tell. But I have to admit....their mega thousand modern Open Reel Decks are certainly better than anything one could purchase in the 70's and 80's for DOSMESTIC use. And those Dolby b encoded QUAD Open Reels on HDDT BD~As really sound quite magnificent. Of course, I would prefer them replicated via Dutton Vocalion's even more magnificent current SACD 4.0 program.
 
HDTT isn't legit (as my linked to post says), but I think they've survived because they're operating in a particularly complicated thicket of law. In a nutshell, they're legal under US federal law, but they're not legal under the law of most US states. They removed the information from their website, but they were based in New Jersey and that's one of the states with fairly clear precedents that what they're doing gives rise to both civil and criminal liability. The relevant NJ criminal statute is here: ftp://www.njleg.state.nj.us/20042005/A3000/2513_I1.HTM - 48 out of 50 states have similar laws.

As a bit of history, in 1908 the US Supreme Court ruled in White-Smith v. Apollo that a piano roll is not protected by copyright. When Congress did a full revision of the copyright laws the following year they said that sound recordings - both piano rolls and rudimentary recordings - were not protected by copyright under federal law. However, over the decades Courts decided that sound recordings were not "published" under state law (it's a legal fiction, just roll with it), and thus were protected by common-law copyright under state law. Congress enacted federal protection for sound recordings effective February 15, 1972, but it only applied to sound recordings made on that day forward - anything older keeps state law protection. This is why HDTT has said it's okay to use pre-1972 sound recordings, but they're ignoring state-law protections. Probably the best-known case on the subject is the 2005 opinion of the highest court of New York in Capitol v. Naxos, where they held that Naxos releases of their own transfers from 78s of Yehudi Menhuin playing Bach could not be sold in New York, even though the recordings were out of copyright in the UK and Naxos had made their own transfer.

This is really only scratching the service of the legal issue, and it's not even touching the issue that even though federal law doesn't protect sound recordings made before 1972, it does protect musical compositions - which is why HDTT limits itself to classical works by long-dead composers (I believe?). Suffice to say that this is an area sufficiently complex that most lawyers simply avoid it, and I suspect HDTT hasn't been sued because of the complexity of the laws at issue.

By the way, the question is entirely different vis a vis Europe, where almost all of their quad transfers are likely infringing.

Hope that helps, and this isn't legal advice. If it were legal advice, it would be accompanied by a bill :)


well, there's this in their catalog:


Title: The Fantasy Film World of Bernard Herrmann
Artist(s): Bernard Herrmann conductor - The National Philharmonic Orchestra
Recording Info: Transferred from a London 4-track Dolby Encoded
Discrete Quadraphonic tape
Producer: Raymond Few Engineer: Arthur Lilley

Recorded June 1974 West Hampstead Studio 3 London


Bernard Herrmann died in 1975, and the recording dates from 1974. It's a bit of a stretch ;>
 
well, there's this in their catalog:


Title: The Fantasy Film World of Bernard Herrmann
Artist(s): Bernard Herrmann conductor - The National Philharmonic Orchestra
Recording Info: Transferred from a London 4-track Dolby Encoded
Discrete Quadraphonic tape
Producer: Raymond Few Engineer: Arthur Lilley

Recorded June 1974 West Hampstead Studio 3 London


Bernard Herrmann died in 1975, and the recording dates from 1974. It's a bit of a stretch ;>

Huh, so yeah. Easy copyright infringement claim for Decca, in Europe or the USA.
 
Increasingly, a number of current HDDT Track offerings are from 15ips 2 track Open Reel Tapes DSD mastered: Example: https://www.highdeftapetransfers.co...n-los-angeles-philharmonic-orchestra-pure-dsd

Another example [not DSD mastered]: https://www.highdeftapetransfers.co...ussr-state-symphony-orchestra-live-recordings

AFAIK, the majors weren't releasing 15ips two track recordings for domestic use back in the late 60's, early 70's. These Open Reels are most probably from private collectors with obvious ties to the music industry....or friends in high places.

A well to do friend of mine from college was able to afford one of these 'puppies' in the late 60's: http://museumofmagneticsoundrecording.org/images/R2R/Ampex350SolidState.jpg:yikes

The frequency response was 30 to 15,000 +/-2 db @ 15ips with a signal to noise ratio of 60 db. My, how times have changed! A $100 BD player exceeds those specs, comfortably.
 
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