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Is it illegal to sell audio of radio shows?

The copyright law applies. It is, in most cases, illegal to distribute (sell or make available to copy) recordings of copyrighted material unless you have the copyright owners permission to do so. Exceptions to this are recordings "in the public domain" (usually recordings to which the copyright has expired).
 
The Fair Use doctrine of US copyright law gives you the right to use excerpts or pieces of copyrighted materials in certain instances. The US Copyright Office has a webpage at http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html which discusses this and says, in part:

Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered “fair,” such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair:

1.the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2.the nature of the copyrighted work;
3.amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.


But generally if you just want to take a recording of someone's copyrighted work (and all radio and TV programming is) and sell it, you need permission from them - and not just permission from the broadcaster, but also from the owners/writers of any music used in the program (even short theme music).
 
What if 40 years ago, you recorded a radio show one sunday afternnon of your favorite jock spinning records at your local station while you were sitting at home and now somebody wants to but this reel to reel tape...are these home recordings of regular show and not network shows okay to sell or are these considered copy writed?
 
I'm not a lawyer and don't pretend to be one but if it were me selling the tape I'd try contacting the station from which the recording was made and get a release. If that was not possible (station is out of biz or is not owned by the originals) then contact a copyright attorney and ask them the question.

Chances are, after 40 years no one will care unless, of course, you happen to own the one and only copy of someone who has lots of public interest and whose estate has deep pockets and an interest in protecting their product.

You might be surprised at the response should someone's heirs sniff a money making opportunity.
 
By the way, there are companies who own the rights to hundreds of classic radio shows from the 30s and 40s. You can buy Lone Ranger, Green Hornet, Fibber McGee & Molly, and many more classics from the past. And those rights are guarded very carefully by the copyright holders.
 
JNight said:
What if 40 years ago, you recorded a radio show one sunday afternnon of your favorite jock spinning records at your local station while you were sitting at home and now somebody wants to but this reel to reel tape...are these home recordings of regular show and not network shows okay to sell or are these considered copy writed?

There are actually people online and on ebay that have been selling these types of shows for years.
 
TTalkradio1 said:
It seems like you can only hear about what past radio hosts have done by word of mouth.

As I previously mentioned you can buy tapes of past radio hosts from people on the internet & elsewhere.
I don't know if it's legal for them to sell the tapes, but they do it.
 
Yes, I wouldn't worry about selling something from the 1940's. I'm worried about selling audio of modern hosts. I see someone is selling audio of Long John Nebel on Ebay.
 
If you can prove you're the copyright holder (Long John's estate or someone from WOR), you can go to ebay and ask them to discontinue the auction of your property.
 
I believe the mantra that the sellers use is that they do not own any piece of the material they sell.
They claim they are just charging for use of the recording equipment.
 
TheBigA said:
If you can prove you're the copyright holder (Long John's estate or someone from WOR), you can go to ebay and ask them to discontinue the auction of your property.

I'm all for the audio being sold. I was just asking to know, because I might sell some audio in the future.
 
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