Talk:Shostakovich v. Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp.

Comment in 2005
This page needs to be cleaned up. It has mixed tenses and more serious grammatical issues that obscure the nature of the court case and its verdict.

Additionally, is the name of the film in question not known? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Beanyk (talk • contribs) 22:49, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Comment in 2006
In addition to the free use of Shostakovitch, I believe Wagner has been used and not compensated. - Charlie Prewett mannermode.com —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.152.138.63 (talk) 05:45, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Background needed
It would be great if someone with knowledge of this case could provide some more details of how it came about. Did Shostakovich himself file the suit? If so, was it his idea or that of the Soviet authorities? How did he know about the film? I don't think the main Shostakovich article touches on this. Thanks. Perodicticus (talk) 12:29, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Public domain
It wouldn't be in the public domain now (published after 1922, composer still alive or now still less than 51 years dead so neither PDUS nor PDCA hence not PDEU either). Why was it in the public domain then? Schissel | Sound the Note! 18:44, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Hoping that an editor can explain this in the article. Davidships (talk) 20:23, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Saw the message at WT:LAW. Not a copyright lawyer, but here's my understanding: the Soviet composers' works were originally published in the USSR, so they would have been public domain in the US since the USSR had no copyright relations with the US and the registration formalities weren't completed. As a result of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act of 1994, however, the copyrights were restored (see ), so these works now are copyrighted and will be until the full 95 years have elapsed (explanation). Does that help? Extraordinary Writ (talk) 03:04, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
 * The plaintiffs also conceded that the works were in the public domain for the purposes of the litigation. Their strategy was to assert moral rights. voorts (talk/contributions) 03:18, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the hard work (and I feel honoured to been a trigger for that).  Good luck at GAN. Davidships (talk) 09:47, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Came here to ask this same question. While the answer given here sounds plausible, surely it should have been vetted and added to the article before making this an "article of the day" on the front page, no? -lethe talk [ +] contribs 13:22, 8 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Nevermind, sorry. I found this sentence in the article, which I missed on first reading:


 * >At oral argument and in their motion, the composers conceded that the compositions at issue were in the public domain in the United States because the Soviet Union and the United States had not entered into a copyright agreement.


 * complete with sources. So I retract my complaint. -lethe talk [ +] contribs 13:24, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Lethe No worries. It also went through FAC review just last month. voorts (talk/contributions) 13:48, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Did you know nomination

 * The phrase should be "four Soviet composers" as Khachaturian was not Russian.
 * The first proposal is not really supported by the quotation. It doesn't say that they described them as "American reactionaries" because they used their music; rather that the American reactionaries who had made the film had additionally stolen their music. (As an aside, in the reference, the earlier part of the quoted sentence is curious as the composers' protest was hardly "limited...to an angry letter", since two national courts considered it and one agreed with them). It might be paraphrased "Four communist party members used communist party rhetoric during the Cold War", which doesn't sound like a DYK hook. Davidships (talk) 02:17, 2 October 2023 (UTC)
 * @Davidships I'm willing to strike the first one and agree "Russian" should be changed to "Soviet" throughout. voorts (talk/contributions) 12:19, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

The current first sentence is utterly misleading, if not just wrong.
The current first sentence (2024-01-09) reads: "Shostakovich v. Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp. is a landmark 1948 New York Supreme Court decision that was the first case in United States copyright law to recognize moral rights in authorship."

Please go read the decision. The decision was a win for the *defendant* (Twentieth Century-Fox), not for the author. The opinion did *not* recognize that the plantiff had moral rights in this specific instance. Nor did it recognize that such applicable rights even exist; the relevant language in the opinion only stipulates that if such applicable rights were to be recognized, then the plantiff might have a case.

The other issue is that the use of "New York Supreme Court" is very misleading; it should more correctly be called by its full name "Supreme Court, Civil Branch, New York County". The State of New York is unusual in that it calls its lowest level county courts "supreme"; all other U.S. states reserve the "supreme" appellation for its highest state appellate court. The use in this article of "Supreme Court" for the initial sentence of the article gives an entirely misleading cast to the import of this defeat for the theory of moral rights in musical compositions. 71.203.105.204 (talk) 20:48, 9 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Hi IP editor. To respond to your points:
 * Reliable sources (i.e., law review articles; see citations after the first sentence) have noted that the court recognized that moral rights may exist, and that it was the first court to do so in the US. We go by what reliable sources say about the opinion, not the opinion itself.
 * New York Supreme Court is not misleading; it's wikilinked in the first sentence and the first paragraph of the second sentence says it's the state's trial court. "Supreme Court, Civil Branch, New York County" (which, if you want to get technical, is not the full name of the Supreme Court; it's "Supreme Court of the State of New York") is unnecessary.
 * voorts (talk/contributions) 21:01, 9 January 2024 (UTC)