I was flicking through "Turn it up" late last night and read about "By Alien Means", a track offered to Madonna for her Like A Prayer album.
In the book it states that a Madonna researcher visited the Library of Congress in Washington DC and listened to the tune. It then quote his reaction to it.
This got me to thinking. Being from the UK I am unsure on US copyright laws but presumably compositions filed at the Library of Congress are in the public domain?
Does this then mean that anyone living in or visiting DC can pop into the library and listen to unreleased / un-bootlegged / unheard prince compositions? Now wouldn't that be cool?
Anyone based in the US able to confirm / deny the plausability of this train of thought?

Prince?

mojo said:

I wonder about this, too. The description sounds really interesting, would love to hear it.

No, u will have 2 enter an application under certain conditions, u might then b allowed 2 go in and listen 2 tracks under surveillance.

mojo said:

well,what was his reaction to it?

Per the Turn it Up book:

If this demo had been sent to me for consideration, it would be like the same feeling as receiving a totally wrong piece of clothing as a birthday gift from a relative,'Thanks, it's-neat'Bruce Baron- Madonna Researcher

Wasn't this also offered to Tony Le Mans?

mojo said:

No, they are still copyrighted until the copyright owner either makes them public domain, or the copyright expires. This is not the case with 'By Alien means' or any other Prince composition, to the best of my knowledge.

Just because something is in a library and it is available for listening / reading etc, has nothing to do with it being in the public domain.I don't know about popping into the Library of Congress and just listening. Usually, such libraries only provide access to such material for research purposes.

The same applies here in the UK for the British Library. To access the material, you have to prove that you are a bona fide researcher and that the material is not available through other public libraries.

You can research (as has been done in Turn It Up) all the material held at the Library of Congress which is copyrighted to Prince - through the Library of Congress search engine from the comfort of your own home, but unfortunately you can't listen to it. When you search, however, you will have to do so in a variety of ways to track down all of Prince's material, partly because of all of the pseudonyms he has used, and partly because the material has been filed incorrectly. The same occurs at the British Library, where I have visited and scoured their Prince and related files, but they do not have any unusual material.

Also be aware that many songs are listed (at both libraries) which correctly bear a credit for Prince, but it is only because the song has a sample of his work included in the recording.

Finally, some of the songs listed in Turn It Up are not registered at the Library of Congress. There existence is, however, known about through circulating unreleased material and / or confirmation from people associated with Prince (Susan Rogers being one obvious example). However, there are some items which are deposited with the Library of Congress, which have yet to be released, including the entire 'Xenophobia' album scheduled for release last year before the title track was removed and it became 'Xpectation', as well as the 'Last December' music announced as an album release in the ONA tour book
[This message was edited Mon Aug 11 13:43:09 PDT 2003 by langebleu]

As a resident in the DC metro area, a quick search on the Library of Congress's website resulted in 41 hits on Prince's name. Most of them are albums and singles with B-sides. TO look for yourself, go here: http://catalog.loc.gov/

Then type in Prince in the search field, and click on "Author/Creator".

I know that any US citizen can get a library card to the Library of Congress and check out books. I didn't really look too hard to see if you could check out these recordings -- I doubt it, but I imagine you could, in fact, pop in and listen to them if you have your card.

PeachBlack said:

You also need to search under a range of other names. Try 'nelson, prince ', under 'author' through:

http://www.copyright.gov/.../cohm.html

and you will have access to 600 different entries under different filing names.

Then try 'starr, jamie' for another 85 entries, and then 'paisley park' and so on.

.
[This message was edited Mon Aug 11 13:30:16 PDT 2003 by langebleu]

has anyone checked out an ascap or bmi search for prince stuff?

ufoclub said:

You can check the ASCAP website under their ACE search engine. Again, not everything is registered accurately there, and some of the registered names conflict with those at the Library of Congress e.g. different pseudonyms might be used at different places. Uptown also research at ASCAP for information.

I am unaware, however, that any material is ever made available through the offices of ASCAP for listening research purposes!!