Hank wrote:
Here's a hypothetical for everybody:
Since Sony did go out of the way to preserve their copyright in Dylan's 1962-63 recordings via the "Copyright Extension/50th Anniversary" sets, should this mean that a future "Bootleg Series" release of "Freewheelin'" outtakes is a possibility?
Would such a vault title be somehow tainted by the fact that it technically contained no previously unreleased material--or would Dylan fans be eager to own a recording of Bob singing "That's All Right, Mama" on some format other than an MP3?
This past summer, Somy re-released their Elvis Presley boxed set "A Boy From Tupelo", originally released in 2012 as a high-end $100+ limited edition box as an $25 3-disc set, despite the fact that everything in the set is in the public domain over in Europe, and that the 2012 box was immediately copied and re-released by at least one EU label. However...is it possible that the demand for grey-area EU releases just isn't all that strong? If, in five or ten years, Sony releases a boxed set which includes a half-dozen JWH outtakes, how much do they really stand to lose if an EU label cherry-picks those six songs and releases them along with, I don't know, Carolyn Hester's 1962 album?
I'm sure that Sony has crunched all these numbers by now, although I can only guess what they've determined. Something tells me they kept an eye on the torrenting which occurred in the wake of the first three copyright extension sets, and as a result went ahead and gave away the 1965 downloads with a pretty good idea of how many people would ultimately be able to obtain them via torrents and file-sharing. But I have no idea. Mostly, I'm just extremely curious about the whole thing.
To your first question, yes, I think a "Complete Freewheelin' Sessions" Bootleg Series is a viable (and possible) future release -- and one of the reasons why they started extending the copyright of all these recordings in the first place. If you look at the session details for Freewheelin', it would make an absolutely fascinating and rewarding release, even if all of it has been "released" in one form or another. To have it all in one coherent package would be very nice, and I think fans would buy it to get those "Copyright Extension" tracks on a "real" Dylan release.
As for the future release of PD material (like the JWH outtakes, if not protected), perhaps they will take the approach that Apple seems to have taken with their unprotected Beatles outtakes. They know that any official, Apple-branded product will dwarf any subsequent gray-market rip-offs -- and they could always try to crush them with lawsuits if they were a little TOO successful.