BBC recording

Brian,

Given that the BBC have taken no action against an eBay buyer who is openly selling copies of recent radio plays despite having him repeatedly drawn to their attention, I'd say go ahead.

Besides if you're privately sharing your recording among friends or acquaintances, how are the BBC ever going to know?

Bert

It is a GREAT shame that the copyright laws aren't framed as being there only to protect sales - and if something is not offered for sale on cassette, VHS, CD, DVD then copyright cover is null and void. That's how I'd like to see copyright operate. Obviously "intellectual property rights" and "moral right as author" is something very different - it's only fair that if people do make their own copies in the absence of commercial release, a charge is made which goes to the copyright holder as royalties in the same way as if it was for sale commercially.

I won't tell them if you don't! You could always send them the iPlayer catch-up link to be really safe :-)

It is a bit of a mess also as the Marakesh treaty allows accessible format things to be made if they do not already exist, and arguably those who cannot operate a smart tv due to blindness would seem to match that template. Brian

Good thought, but reading that out accurately could be a challenge! Brian

Assuming that all of you pay BBC "tax" (or are exempt), I would say that at least morally your are OK as far as I am concerned.

Just do it. It would be great to see the BBC chasing a load of blindeys over such a thing. The press would love it.

Bill

But why should a rights holder be *forced* to release a work ?

This pops up in the legal forum occasionally. At what point does your "right" to acquire my work trump *my* rights to distribute (or not) as I see fit ?

On a related topic, I've noticed that some BBC radio output annoyingly isn't available in podcast form. "The Unbelievable Truth" and "Museum of Curiosity" being 2. Which is a nuisance ... there's no problem getting the actual audio (cough, cough). But the lack of metadata wrapping it means a much less rich experience than a true podcast, where the data about the recording is picked up by your podcast player of choice and rendered into an easy to read format (I'm sure Brian would appreciate the latter).

I did get as far as loading a podcast generator webapp onto a server to try and generate a decent feed for "Museum of Curiosity".

He's already released it by publishing it in the first place.

I'm not saying that they should be forced to release it. If they want to keep it private and not publish it, that's up to them. But if they choose to publish it (make it available to the public) then they should either be forced to make copies available in whatever numbers they want forever afterwards, or else they should forfeit the copyright. Copyright (as opposed to moral rights) should be used *only* to protect sales - no sales, no copyright protection.

I don't begrudge paying appropriate royalties for each and every copy, but I do begrudge the copyright holder restricting sales of something that he has already "published" - as if to say "*I* don't want to make any more copies of this, and also I don't want anyone else to make copies of it - *even if they pay royalties on it*".

Yes I'd agree with that, the only problem could be if you are seen to be making a profit from it, which we know isn't your intention.

So providing you don't ask for anything in return other than costs such as P&P or media costs you should be OK.