Is this legal?

[hosman321]

I'm just curious if it's ok to make reproduction records. I mean, it's one thing to make a copy for yourself or something. With no box and no writing. But to put your own serial numbers with the Edison name? And they look just like the originals. These repros with eventually confuse collectors and newbies. I'm just curious...is this allowed?

http://berlinphonographworks.com/index.html

[Old61]

Very few claimed copyright to their works in the early days. The short answer is yes it is legal.
The law has a scale of when/what & how long the copyright applies if it was claimed. These days, everything published has an automatic copyright even if not filed for. But if you needed to go to court to protect it, you would stand a better chance if you sent in the paper work.

[KC]

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.

[Old61]

http://librarycopyright.net/digitalslider/

[hosman321]

That is just amazing to me. Now that I think of it, that's why all these companies can make exact replica parts. With the patent number and date and everything. I guess I always thought that family members or private parties owned the rights to items like this. But in the end, nobody does? These days, exact replicas are a big problem, but they didn't think of that back then! I'm sure Edison didn't think over 100 years later his phonographs would still be fairly common, nor did he think he'd have a problem with everybody making reproductions.

[syl]

I think Edison patented everything he invented but patents expire over time. At that point these things fall into what you might call public domain. That's haw it works in music publishing anyway. And it's possible that the company making these records has paid a fee to allow them to do it.