The legality of circulating the Girly Sound recordings

[avj]

I'm pretty close to feeling comfortable with unleashing the noise-reduced songs, but as I was typing up a bit of copy to go along with them I started thinking about the legal implications of circulating the Girly Sound tapes to the masses.

As a musician and someone who's always working on some audio project, I'm not really into the whole "music piracy" thing, but this is a different situation. As far as I know, the songs have never been packaged and distributed commercially by the copyright holder, so I guess I've just flexed my morals a bit in this case. I own all of Liz's albums on CD, and I'm pretty sure that if she magically materialized a pristine master copy and handed it to a record company that was able to give it the million-dollar treatment, we'd all be running out to buy it.

I suppose it could be inferred that we're potentially endangering future profits that are entitled to the copyright holder by diluting the value of her intellectual property; who knows. If someone has made a dime from these recordings and not funneled it back to the copyright holder, my position on that is unwavering: death by blood loss from sloppy genital mutilation.

I'm sure this has been discussed before but I'm just curious what everyone's opinion on this is, especially of course harkrider and Gevaudan or anyone else that's distributed the songs.

Edit: I'm pretty new to the "discussing Liz Phair online with other fans" thing, so I'm not intimate with everything at the forumsunlimited forum. Here's an older discussion that sort of touches on it as well:

http://www.lizphair.forumsunlimited.com/index.php?showtopic=193

[harkrider]

I think we're acting in her best interests.  Like you said, the people who sell Girly Sound bootlegs are the ones who should be stopped.  There are two forces that act against such bootleggers:

1) lack of interest in Girly Sound (if people don't want it, they won't buy it)
2) free availablity of Girly Sound (if they can get it for free, people won't buy it)

We help out with #2 directly, by making it available.  Ironically, we also raise interest in Girly Sound, ever so slightly, which does raise its value, ever so slightly. 

Here's an important question: what is the value of Girly Sound?  Well, to me and maybe 100 people it's extremely valuable.  To the average person it doesn't even exist.  Unless those 100 fans multiply exponentially, there really isn't a market.  There isn't even a viable black market.  Sure, you can talk about future value.  But then remember that these recordings are from 1991.  So unless there is some cryogenic marketing plan at work...

The worst (and maybe best) thing that happens is this: Girly Sound does become more popular, so much so that Liz Phair takes an interest.  If that happens, I'll gladly hand her control of the girlysound.com domain.  She can then orchestrate a proper clean up, production, and release of the dual album, complete with a wax pressing. 

But why wait?  I'll ask her myself.  I'll write her a letter.  My guess is that she won't respond.  But you never know.

[shmoopy]

I remember reading an interview with Liz where she was asked how she felt about the Girly Sound tapes being circulated and her response was that she was all for it and she hoped that fans would "bootleg the fuck out of them" or something similar. She has even stated that she listens to bootleg copies of the tapes that have been passed onto her. These songs have been circulating for years for free so I wouldn't lose too much sleep over it.

[TrampolineFrSpace]

There was similar discussions about the music of Judee Sill.  The guy that created the website for her music actually created enough of an interest in the music that the record company rereleased the material on CD and asked them, politely, to remove their copies of it.

I think all of this is done with the greatest of respect for Liz Phair and does help the value and future value of this material.

Disclaimer:  I am not a lawyer and my words should not be interpreted as legal advice.

[Gevaudan]

Distribute it both online and offline to your friends, friends of friends and beyond that.
Just don't sell it. 

Liz has in fact said "bootleg the hell out of it," so that pretty much sums it all up in my opinion.

Way back in late 1997/98, before LPX was LPX (it had a more hideous name in the beginning), Girly Sound has been available for everyone (there were other sites too that came before it) online.  Not once did I ever receive a C&D letter from anyone.  When LizPhair.com launched for the self titled record, LPX (then titled Supernova) was listed in the 'community' section of the site with a few other pages.  One would think that Liz had to have some input on the site and it's contents... and if she did, she knew it was there for everyone to grab.  There were several Capitol/EMI employees that visited Supernova as well, and I know they had no problem with it. Believe me, I asked.

The only thing I've been told by an EMI employee about trading/distributing Liz's music is that any demo/unfinished/unreleased material that she recorded while under contract with EMI/Capitol is off limits, and in all actuality shouldn't be in the possession of listeners/fans.  This applies to the demos for Liz Phair, Somebody's Miracle and whitechocolatespaceegg.    As far as I'm concerned, demo material from the Egg being off limits is debatable.  It was a Matador recording, distributed by Capitol.

Anyway, back to the point.  I think we're safe when it comes to making Girly Sound available to everyone that wants it, as long as it remains free.

[TrampolineFrSpace]

Good point, Gevaudan.

I'd also be inclined to provide burned CD-Rs to folk, probably mostly at my own cost.  This stuff is so amazing that it seems a crime to want to make money off of it.  I certainly couldn't do it.

[avj]

Thanks all -- this is great to hear. I feel much better knowing it's been discussed before (which I sort of figured) and we all share a common set of ideals with regard to free distribution.

[wooden and alone]

i think movie producers should take advantage of this lack of copyright issue thing and just put the songs in their cute indie movies. a film girly sound songs playing for those weird indie scenes about people breaking up.. that'll be nice. i think batmobile was used in an indie film recently.. i wonder if liz was even aware of it.

[TrampolineFrSpace]

I don't wish to be an jerk, but Batmobile is on Juvenilia.  Which version of Batmobile did you hear in the Indie movie?

If it's the Juvenilia version, then I'm sure that Liz got some royalties on it.

[wooden and alone]

i have not seen the movie. i just read a review. and it seemed pretty amateurish from the description. so i don't think liz was aware of it. or maybe she was.

[Yernar]

I thought that in Feb 2007 the copyright holder (Blush & Fetish?) released the Girlysound recordings.  Is that true?  I would love to d/l some of the tracks from your girlysound.com site.  Is that still permitted?

Thanks.



As a musician and someone who's always working on some audio project, I'm not really into the whole "music piracy" thing, but this is a different situation. As far as I know, the songs have never been packaged and distributed commercially by the copyright holder, so I guess I've just flexed my morals a bit in this case. I own all of Liz's albums on CD, and I'm pretty sure that if she magically materialized a pristine master copy and handed it to a record company that was able to give it the million-dollar treatment, we'd all be running out to buy it.

[shmoopy]

None of the Girly Sound tapes have ever been officially released. They have been bootlegged and traded; "Bliss and Fetish" was merely a bootleg label that once distributed copies of a collection of Girly Sound tracks. Liz Phair is the sole owner and copyright holder of those tapes. She has however given her blessing for the tapes to be bootlegged and shared by fans.

[TrampolineFrSpace]

While it is true that none of the GirlySound tapes have been officially released as they were initially packaged by Liz, several songs from the mysterious tape 3 were published as a part of the Juvenilia EP.

There were rumors that tape 3 was going to be released sometime in December 2006, but that never happened.

If, and when, a good copy (early generation) of tape 3 is made available, I'm sure that Harkrider will make make those recordings available for download as well.

One of the things on my "to do" list is to prototype the layout for guitar tabs and to upload them to my personal site.  Once we get the format down, we'll try to also publish as many guitar tabs for Liz songs as well on the main site.

[oltraver]

Hey all.

I'm surprised to see people still talking about these discs.  I was the one who compiled the Bliss & Fetish version back in the early to mid 90's.  Mind you, I had little to no experience doing such a thing at the time, AND CD-Rs cost about 10 bucks EACH back in the day, so I did charge for them on the old Phair mailing list, much to some people's (and my own - in hindsight ) disappointment.

Needless to say, I have seen many discographies list them as bona fide release (which they were not, they were CD-Rs) and also have seen an endless slew of them for sale on eBay over the years (with my discs being the source, as I know due to inclusion of 'Combo Platter' and some of my editing mistakes).  As for these eBay copies being pressed CDs, not sure.  I found a copy once in a record store and only listened to them to verify they were the ones that I did..

Anyway, please keep me in the discussion loop for any questions, I may be able to dig up my old DATs and such and maybe provide insight on the sources that I used.

The version I made had the little girl with the dog on the front.

-Patrick Oltraver

[TrampolineFrSpace]

Patrick,
Nice to hear from you.  I can appreciate the fact that you wanted to recoup your costs.

I created an iron on patch for people to make a Liz Phair 40th birthday T-shirt.  I deliberately went out trying to make a way for it to be inexpensive.

$5 pretty much covered my costs (printing, materials, shipping, etc.) and that's all I asked.

Thanks for trying to help give back to the Liz Phair community.

Oh, and thanks for stopping by!