An interesting article in the UK
Guardian details how a new box set of Bob Dylan demos, limited to only 100 copies, is a tactic to provide copyright protection for the material, which otherwise could be freely boolegged in Europe.
The gist is, by "officially" releasing it now, Dylan's label can prevent bootlegging of the songs and release them more widely at a later date.
Although the European Union has extended copyright terms
from 50 years to 70 years, the extension only applies to recordings
that have been released during the 50 years after they were made. Sony
was therefore forced to release these songs – albeit in limited form –
before the end of 2012, when their half-century was up.
"This
isn't a scheme to make money," a source explained to Rolling Stone.
"The whole point of copyrighting [this material] is that we intend to do
something with it at some point in the future. But it wasn't the right
time to do it right after [Dylan] released Tempest."
