Sound recordings were not protected by US copyright until 1976

Before the 1976 US Copyright Act revision, sound recordings had no copyright protection in the United States — only written scores were eligible. The prevailing legal view was that recordings were ‘mere uses or applications of creative works in the form of physical objects,’ not creative works themselves. This meant that for the first 99 years of the phonograph era, the act of recording was legally distinguishable from the act of composing. Canada’s Copyright Act of 1924 differed, extending protection to ‘records, perforated rolls and other contrivances.’ This legal history explains why early sampling existed in a relatively permissive environment before the sampling litigation of the 1990s.

Examples

Charles Ives could borrow freely from folk and popular sources in his era because most of that music existed in a public domain with no recorded-sound protection. Early hip-hop producers in the late 1970s operated in a similarly unregulated landscape.

Assessment

State the year US copyright first protected sound recordings, and explain what was and was not protected before that date.