Legal rights to airchecks (Was Re: job question)

[mwaters@wesleyan.edu (Martin J. Waters)]

>On Fri, 19 Jun 1998, Donna Halper wrote:
>
>>The blind couple (husband and wife) I've mentioned on this list before
>>>>(they are big fans of LTAR and collect airchecks of Boston radio
>>>>announcers from the 50s, 60s, or whatever else anyone wants to donate)
>>>>are looking for work.
>
>Joe Ross wrote:
>I'll bet they've got a great collection.  What a shame it can't be played
>on LTAR.  I haven't thought it through or researched it, but I assume
>there'd be legal complications.
>snip<

        What is the legal situation on radio airchecks? Does the company
that owned the station when the broadcast was made retain rights
indefinitely? Let's say you wanted to do a radio program about the history
of Boston radio and use a whole range of clips. Is there any "fair use"
provision for use of a bona fide historic broadcast, for example, the
aircheck of WBZ (AM) at the moment when the WBZ-TV tower fell and hit their
building during the hurricane in the early 1950s? Or would you have to
track down every company / successor company and get permission?
        Vast amounts of this material is given away and sold on cassettes
and is available now on the internet. How does that work? What about all
the internet sites dedicated to 1960s' top 40 stations (such as the WRKO
site), which have many airchecks?

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