When do the rights to those mastertapes become available
again??

Was it 25 or 30 or even 35 years??

If it's 25 than the "For You" master should be available
for Prince to get back now.

IstenSzek said:

35 years.
btw it are the rights to the recorded performances by PRINCE. "mastertapes" is a misleading term to use and confuses many people on this site..
[This message was edited Tue Apr 8 8:37:37 PDT 2003 by huggy]

huggy said:

And once that 35 year term is up, then what happens?

Do these rights just automatically go back to Prince
or does he than get offered a chance to buy them back
or something??

I mean, I just got very confused when Michael Jackson
bought all those Beatle tunes and those Sly songs.

How could that happen? Or was that some different sort
of construction??

The rights are separated: The RECORDED PERFORMANCE (Copyright in the sound Recording), PUBLISHING, and SONGWRITING.

Eleventeen said:

Correct, however "publishing" = 1) the copyrights in the composition of the song and 2) the copyrights in the lyrics.

IstenSzek said:

No, US copyrightlaw describes certain rules on how to get a transferred copyright back to the original owner.


Those songs and recordings were created under the old copyrightlaw, without the provison I was talking about.

I mean, I just got very confused when Michael Jackson
bought all those Beatle tunes and those Sly songs.

How could that happen? Or was that some different sort
of construction??[/quote]
___

Michael Jackson doesn't own the Beatle recordings, he owns most of the copyrights to the Lennon-McCartney songs.
The recordings are owned by EMI and the newly released stuff (Live at the BBC, Anthology) is owned by Apple under exclusive license to EMI.