This post is interesting (albeit the legal precedent is Canadian)

http://www.entertainmentmedialawsigna ... copyright-in-an-interview

That is interesting & certainly follows what you'd have guessed; namely that the person interviewed (audio & or visual) is certainly not the copyright holder. How on earth would any broadcaster be able to operate otherwise.

My point about the Tolkien Estate was really along these lines. They'd have had to acquire the copyright as I don't believe they would have originally owed the copyright to random interviews Tolkien had given 50+ years ago.

Interesting discussion! Did a bit of Googling just out of interest, and it really seems like for spoken interviews, the copyright lies only with the "recording" (and the entity making the recording), not the speakers, except in very unusual cases.

For example, from https://www.newmediarights.org/are_interviews_copyrighted :

Recently, in Taggart v. WMAQ Channel 5 Chicago, the court held that an inmate had no copyright ownership over his speech during an interview recorded by (and later broadcast by) the television company. The inmate argued that his speech was protected by copyright law because his responses were a “performance”. The court disagreed saying the inmate’s speech was only an idea, and that ideas are not protected by copyright law. Further the court said, “the copyright itself lies within the photographing or otherwise recording of the event, not in the event itself.” This means that the owner of the copyright was the broadcast company because they video recorded (fixed) the interview.

"Surely the radio station must at least effectively have an implied perpetual license to use the words, even if the copyright remains with the interviewee." — Nope. I don't doubt that such an assignment of rights to republish, etc., is routinely requested by interviewers, and probably often granted; but such rights are neither implicit nor granted by default.

Aelfwine wrote:
"Surely the radio station must at least effectively have an implied perpetual license to use the words, even if the copyright remains with the interviewee." — Nope. I don't doubt that such an assignment of rights to republish, etc., is routinely requested by interviewers, and probably often granted; but such rights are neither implicit nor granted by default.

What you are saying does conflict with what is written elsewhere, and I don't believe live radio would even be possible if it worked that way. That said, I imagine it differs by jurisdiction (thankfully US copyright law doesn't yet apply here in NZ, despite the attempts to make it so via TPPA..). I suspect this one needs a lawyer to give an answer that is somewhat definitive.

That said, I do fully believe that the winner will always be the party with the most money in any dispute. The legal system is essentially only accessible to the wealthy, certainly in the United States and UK, but elsewhere too. Unless you really want to defend yourself in court, most people find it is easier to simply roll over if the other party has deep pockets.

Well OK then....

Another post:

http://www.rightsofwriters.com/2011/01/who-owns-interview.html

I don't think there is a single definitive answer (and anyone who suggests there is, is almost certainly wrong, based on the disparities in judgments over the years).


From the above,

"All of this is seldom of any great practical consequence to writers. In the absence of some agreement to the contrary, if the interviewee knew he was being interviewed, a court would virtually always conclude that, at the very least, the interviewee had implicitly granted the interviewer a non-exclusive license to publish the resulting interview. "

... which is exactly what I supposed in my earlier post ("Is that definitely the case? It would render pretty much any interview impossible to broadcast. Surely the radio station must at least effectively have an implied perpetual license to use the words, even if the copyright remains with the interviewee..")

Hello there,
Do you know if it exists a transcript of this interview somewhere ?

Druss wrote:
Hello there,
Do you know if it exists a transcript of this interview somewhere?

I don't think it does exist, my question about copyright on this interview, was to see if it could be reproduced, but this can only be done if you know who owns the copyright, and I don't think we know this.

Interviews are generally licensed as a non-exclusive and can be shared freely, if one were to publish it online on a blog or news site then as long as the entity or person who conducted the interview and the interviewee are given credit there is little that can be done by anybody else who thinks they may have some claim to it.