Copyright Issues for Sound Recordings of Volunteer Performers

Is copyright jurisprudence ready to handle a situation where three and four hundred people own a copyright in a single work? The copyright code does provide solutions for this type of situation, but the solution provided may not be the best one. This Note discusses how this situation may arise, and it recommends possible solutions to alleviate it. The first section will present a brief history of copyright law.

The second section will explain the purpose of the termination of transfers encoded in section 203 of the Copyright Act. The third section will discuss the importance of the employment relationship between musicians, the organization in which they perform, and the record companies. This section includes several examples of performance organizations and analyzes the employment relationships described above. The last section will present the copyright concerns in greater detail, including the historical attempts to solve this problem.

Several solutions will be proposed to solve or mollify the effects of these copyright issues.