Originally Posted by: CSchlegelFor example, Duke Ellington & George Gershwin & their immediate families have been dead for decades. But copyrights on their tunes are still being "renewed" over and again by third parties. :confused: I know they are able to make money on them, and that's great.

Its funny that you would mention Gershwin specifically. When I began reading this thread I had decided that I was going to ask about "Rhapsody in Blue" and whether is had made it to PD. I guess I already have my answer :-)

Interesting topic. I can understand the family of the song writer benefiting or own the rights to the songs of dead artists. But record companies simply "milking it" as long as the law will allow begins to seem dirty after some number of years. On one hand I think music would be better off without the "music industry". But, on the other hand, I would probably have never heard of Gershwin without the big machine that is Disney (I'll admit it, I heard it first on Fantasia 2000 with my kids).