Kahle v. AshcroftSunny California (MERCURY Records: 3772)
originally submitted by Jeffrey Goldberg:
"Sunny California" is a music LP released in 1979 by Mercury Music. The artist is Mary McCaslin. It was in print for just a short amount of time (I don't know details). Today, the only way to legally acquire it is to purchase a used vinyl copy (which will all show their age) and have that expensively transfered to a more usable medium.
Before doing that, I contacted Mercury and asked them whether they could sell me a copy, but was informed that it was out of print because it didn't do well at the time.
In my email to Mercury (in 2002 I believe), I stated the opinion that they take things out of print and retain the copyright solely because they don't want finer control of what is on the market. The denied that in their answer.
I will attempt to dig up my correspondence with them, but I am not certain that I can find it or still have it.
Since that time, I have come to the conclusion that artists should only agree to copyright transfer if the copyright would be return to the artist if the publisher takes the work out of print.
Jeffrey Goldberg
Stifled uses
Jeffrey Goldberg:
I wanted to listen to it. I like a number of songs on the album (particularly "California Zephyr"). I had a vinyl copy years ago.