Google: Sorry professor, old Beethoven recordings on YouTube are copyrighted

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Dr. Ulrich Kaiser is Professor of Music Theory, Ombudsman for Good Scientific Practice and Head of the Multimedia Department for Teacher Education at the Munich University of Music and Theatre.

This article was originally published by the Wikimedia Foundation and is reprinted here with his permission.

Imagine you are a teacher at a public school and you want to use a free recording of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in your classroom. As an author of music textbooks and a music theory professor, I am always looking for creative ways to develop teaching materials as Open Educational Resources (oer-musik.de) so that everyone can share and learn from these important recordings. In an effort to develop a set of these materials, I recently began to digitize both my own records as well as records from my employer.

Under German law, the copyright term for recordings which were made prior to January 1, 1963 has expired, meaning they have entered the public domain. Recordings taken after that date were given extended protection in 2013 and thus cannot be digitized. Aware of this rule, I only undertook to upload recordings which were taken before the 1963 date in order to fully comply with the law. Despite that precaution, the process that followed presented a number of unexpected challenges.

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