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Your Questions Answered..! |
Tomahawk Films receives many questions and Producer' Brian Matthews answers some of the more regular ones...
Third Reich CD & Video Piracy and 1933-45 Copyright Legislation.
As a long-standing television producer and writer/researcher in the field of WW-II documentary film making and specialist military magazine work, I have had more reason than many to come up against the baffling copyright issues surrounding the death of the Third Reich in 1945 and can attest to it being a bit of a mine-field, (sorry about that one!!).
In England we work to the Enemy Property Act 1945, which in effect states 'to the victor go the spoils', effectively giving us free reign to use, as we please, any former items that were copyrighted by the Third Reich, (in the US it is known as the Public Domain Act). As you can appreciate that ruling is now nearly 60 years old and has not had, to my knowledge, any updates applied to it to represent the modern world though in fact to be fair, most people don't even know it exists!!
However in the field of music a number of the former German music publishing houses still exist and retain the copyright to all printing of their sheet music, (just to confuse things), this also goes for some record companies, however the bands that played the particular tracks obviously no longer exist and were much a part of the Nazi world, so it is hard to claim an international corporate copyright over a band performing at the behest of a now deemed illegal operation.
In the matter of Tomahawk Films music CD's we actually paid a performance fee to acquire all the rights to reproduce from the original 78 rpm shellac records, (a fairly enormous sum I might add), and then in taking that original material and restoring it and refurbishing it and digitally re-mastering it, copyright in that finished work lies, as per International Law, with our company Tomahawk Films. (not just the cover art-work but in the reproduced music as well, as new professional production was applied to it).
It is therefore totally illegal for a third party to then make a copy of that finished work either for their own use of to sell to unsuspecting customers as the originals. Not only is this theft but it is giving Tomahawk Films a bad name as the pirate/thief is selling very sub-standard copies of our work. Naturally all steps will be taken to stop these pirates, (sorry thieves), in their tracks by suing them to a complete stand-still, (or into bankruptcy if needs be).
As a professional film television and production company you can rest assured that Tomahawk Films have taken every step to ensure that our recordings fall within copyright guide-lines and that all neccesary permissions have been sought and granted and the correct royalties have been paid to the relevant copyright/licence holders, where known or still believed to be in existence.
Copyright matters of The Third Reich will, however, continue to be a grey area for as long as we are all around, however I like to think that, at Tomahawk Films, we know as much, if not more, than most, purely by dint of the fact that we have been dealing with such matters for many, many years.
Providing samples of our music online.
A big thank you to everybody that has kindly contacted Tomahawk Films over the past 18 months or so to suggest that we make 30 second clips of our Third Reich Music Archive available on the internet for potential customers tolisten to, in advance of a making their purchase.
Accordingly we have discussed the matter with our sound engineers and the recording studio at which we digitally re-master our archival material, but have jointly decided that this would not be such a good idea after all, because of the varying quality of customer's computers, sound-cards and general computerised audio equipment through which our music would be subsequently listened to on-line!
In some cases the potential customer would indeed get the benefit of the full, rich, digitally re-mastered music in all its wonderful pre-1945 glory, whilst others, unfortunately, would run the risk of getting something horribly tinny or watered-down, which would bear no relation to how our superb music archive actually sounds and, as you could imagine, would not be a very good advert for our company's products!
So, regretably, the team at Tomahawk Films have made a conscious decision not to offer sample 'tasters' on-line as we would have no quality control over what is heard at the down-load end; instead we would much prefer to politely ask any customers who may want some reassurance before they buy our CDs, to kindly log-in to our Quotes page and see what many previous delighted customers have said, (unbidden), about the high quality of the Tomahawk Films WW-II German Music, Film and Sound Effects Archive.
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