@Silke Helfrich: Gerne würde ich vorab das wohl lange Inhaltsverzeichnis sehen. Magst/darfst du das hier als Kommentar einstellen? Oder den Verlag bitten, ihn auf die Buchinformationsseite zu stellen? Und das dann hier verlinken?

[Anmerkung Red.: obiger Kommentar wurde "repariert"]

Das Buch ist ebenfalls unter einer (allerdings restriktiven) CC-Lizenz erschienen und ist per Download oder als Printausgabe erhältlich.

If Sony were making more money off these releases, you bet that all this unreleased material would come rocketing out of the Sony vault and Yale archive. Hence, with popular artists such as Horowitz or Eugene O’Neill, I think the problem is NOT centrally the copyright, but one of consumer expression. It’s all about money, unfortunately.

While that is certainly true, I still think that copyright is a huge part of the problem. As it is, Sony has the explicit commercial rights to these recordings, so as long as they decide that they can’t get enough money out of them, they stay unreleased. Without copyright, or if the duration of copyright was much shorter so that it had already expired, somebody else could get them published. Either smaller companies that might be less risk-averse than Sony or are satisfied with lower profit margins than Sony is willing to accept, or even fan groups who just want to share these recordings with the world without expecting a financial payoff.

Without copyright, there would still be the problem of how and whether such independent actors would get access to the unreleased material, but I suppose that would be solvable. At is is, copyright stops all independent efforts that aren’t approved by both Sony and the Horowitz Estate.

Unfortunately, part of my answer to this question was cut out. When I said that “the death of the artist or generator ultimately facilitates access,” I meant that their wishes that material not be released can be voided or circumvented. Hence, the copyright, their family’s ownership, is usually not the problem.

I can cite all sorts of examples where artists have barred posthumous releases of certain works, and after their death, members of the family have immediately made arrangements for the works to be released. My (cut) example, was playwright Eugene O’Neill decreeing in his will that “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” not be made public until twenty-five years (or so) years after his death. I’m not sure whether it was for artistic or financial reasons, but O’Neill’s wife and lawyers arranged for the play to be performed only two years after his death.

This principle applies to Vladimir Horowitz as well. Wanda expressly decreed that “St. Francis Walks on the Water,” “Islamey,” and ALL OTHER pieces from the Yale collection not be commercially released. However, after she died in 1998, despite her wishes to the contrary, this is how happening. If Sony were making more money off these releases, you bet that all this unreleased material would come rocketing out of the Sony vault and Yale archive. Hence, with popular artists such as Horowitz or Eugene O’Neill, I think the problem is NOT centrally the copyright, but one of consumer expression. It’s all about money, unfortunately.

Bernie

Frankly, I have a hard time to believe that: a) the curator of a website devoted to the works of a famous musician, “both commercial and pirated” as the home page says, is actually believing that: with respect to artists restricting access to their own material, I don’t feel that copyright is something we should worry too much about  [because] in most such cases, the death of the artist or generator of the restricted material ultimately facilitates access b) the interviewer didn’t spot such a huge flaw in the answer.