Good Luck!!

They wouldn’t talk to us. We tried many times. The licensing offices gave us the runaround – they really don’t talk to individuals, which is why the whole system is such a racket. And we couldn’t contact the composers directly, because they’re all DEAD.

I’m sad to say that you have made a capital mistake. You had a law firm contact the publishers.

In the past I’ve dealt with CMG Worldwide http://www.cmgworldwide.com for the rights to use the name and likeness of Marilyn Monroe for my tribute album “My Marilyn”, a jazz hommage to Marilyn Monroe. I have to admit, that I fell on a very understanding person there, who could understand my financial situation and we came to an agreement that worked for both sides. However, this took weeks of negotiating. Had I not called there personally, this would never have happened. For the foto of Marilyn by Bert Stern (Marilyn the last Sitting), I also contacted Mr. Stern personally and we came to a mutually satisfying agreement.

Same situation for my CD “Selma”, for which I had to secure the worldwide exclusive rights to put the poems of Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger to music http://www.selma.tv. The owner of the rights is the publisher Hoffmann und Campe, one of the biggest publishers for books in the world. I met countless times with the woman from licensing to convince her of the project. Had I let a law firm represent me, I wouldn’t have worked in a million years.

There is only one person in the world, that can make people understand where you’re coming from and where you’re going: YOU!

Best wishes
David

P.S. Tonight I’m going to see your movie in Basel, Switzerland !

Based on your current production & distribution model, you can get fans to help out in producing these as well for free. There’s ample proof online of what people is willing to do, in their free time, without getting paid, for the sake of fandom. And I’m sure lots of people will want to see these too. More power to ya!

And eff big corporations, and their lobbyists who persuade our government to allow them to stamp down on creativity.

Funny thing, though, no matter how hard the MPAA, RIAA, etc. have tried, no one’s paying for their crap music anymore.

As for the compositions, if the music publishers did not renew the copyrights after 28 years, they would have entered they public domain. The publishers may charge, but they have no right to do so.

Lastly, are you sure that the work was done as work for hire (which is unusual in the music industry) – or did the composer sign over the copyrights? If the latter, then her heirs can terminate that grant of copyright and get it back themselves.

Can you explain more the copyright status of the recordings and the underlying compositions?

The current holders of the composition copyrights are not owners; they can only impose their restrictions because they have been granted that privilege from the state. In a free market Nina would have no problems, since she could have inexpensively obtained the material to construct her movie from any of a number of parties and would have no one to pay now. It is only the mercantilist monopoly imposed by the state on trade in Hanshaw’s compositions that is causing trouble and reducing value. (The capitalist writers argued against mercantilist policy, but very few people understand or speak about this now. You can actually read Adam Smith to understand this yourself, though, if you are interested.)

It’s hard to fault any particular artist for misunderstanding how copyright works, since very, very few people can follow the details completely. The most important thing that people generally get wrong is to mistakenly think that copyright provides money to artists, when easy research can demonstrate that this is extremely rare. This can be very confusing and painful for artists in particular, who are most likely to be taken advantage of by being lied to about the workings of copyright. You should be careful that you are not a contributing part of this harm.

Please take this as an opportunity to do some open research yourself to verify what actually happens. Don’t, for example, accept as true the figures handed out by the record industry on how much musicians are paid; look for the only independent research that uses aggregate tax data from England and Germany. I hope that you see this response and take this request seriously, and it leads you to question your current views and to broaden your understanding. People like Nina deserve to be treated better.