[Drew68]

The U.S. Second Circuit of Appeals disagreed with a lower court judge who dismissed the case against the store owner, Jean Martignon, after the government charged he sold unauthorized recordings of concerts.

I thought bootlegs had always been illegal?

I recall as a teenager in the 1980s going to a seedy, corner record store and quietly whispering to the old hippie lady who worked there, "Hey, ya' got any Zeppelin?" She'd look around and retrieve a her latest batch of Led Zeppelin live bootleg LPs from under the counter. I felt like I was buying drugs!

It was a little like buying drugs! Those LPs were expensive and sometimes they were really bad. Other times, they were very, very good!

[weegee]

There is book on the bootleg record industry that is an interesting read.

This is an asinine ruling. It was crafted by Hollywood, to be sure. It is interesting how Disney Corp. has pushed to prolong copyright while also fighting to see that Winnie the Pooh becomes public domain so they don’t have to pay the family anymore.

All works should eventually lapse into the public domain.

The book on bootlegs begins with some history on how the works of Shakespeare are known today because of bootleggers (reportedly there were no collections officially published in his lifetime).