Free Republic

European copyright protection is expiring on a collector's trove of 1950's jazz, opera and early rock 'n' roll albums, forcing major American record companies to consider deals with bootleg labels and demand new customs barriers. Already reeling from a stagnant economy and the illegal but widespread downloading of copyrighted music from the Internet, the recording companies will now face a perfectly legal influx of European recordings of popular works. Copyright protection lasts only 50 years in Europe compared to 95 years in the United States, even if the recordings were originally made and released in America. So recordings made in...

Despite efforts by record executives to stanch declining CD sales by releasing a cavalcade of big-name artists during the critical Christmas shopping season, early sales figures show an already struggling industry may now be in even worse shape. In the five weeks since mid-November, when the record labels began their biggest holiday blitz in recent memory, compact disc sales were down 12.9 percent compared to the period in 2001, according to data from Nielsen SoundScan, which tracks music sales. That poor performance comes even as new CDs from artists like Shania Twain, Mariah Carey, Jay-Z and Paul McCartney have sold...