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Digital Legal
Classical site found liable for distributing rival firm’s recordings
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 16 October 2012
A court in Edinburgh has ruled against a website that provides recordings of classical music for use in sync projects and such things for a one-off fee, after a label claimed that it was making available two of its recordings without permission.
The website is called www.royalty-free-classical-music.org, and provides access to a plethora of traditional classical recordings, offering licences to use the music in various contexts for a nominal one-off fee. Of course the compositions themselves are old enough to be out of copyright, though a separate right will exist in the sound recording itself.
Project Management [Borders] Limited, which operates the website, says it owns the sound recording rights in the music it provides, and in most cases that may well be true, but another classical music distributor called Naxos claimed that the versions of Christmas carol ‘Joy To The World’ and Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’ that the site provided were recordings it owned.
Keith Salmon, owner of Project Management, disputed that claim, but, based on expert evidence presented in court, judge Angus Glennie sided with the claimants. He ruled that the version of ‘Joy To The World’ and at least part of the ‘Four Seasons’ suite on Salmon’s site were indeed the recordings owned by Naxos, adding that it seemed likely the recordings had been tweaked to disguise that fact, something with the judge reckoned damaged Salmon’s credibility.
Project Management will now have to remove said recordings from its site (though actually I think it already had) and share information of any sales of those tracks to date, to enable Naxos to prepare a bid for damages.
