get it while it's cold

Every winter, the March 1951 radio play based on Laura Ingalls Wilder's The Long Winter is offered for "free" online somewhere. I've had a blog about copyrights in my mind ever since my website was the site of online rape and pillage last year by some unscrupulous foreign yahoo writing [sic] her "own" Laura Ingalls Wilder website. Sorry folks. If I do the primary research about it and write it or draw it based on that research and upload it to my own website that I pay dearly for, it's mine, and I ought to have a right to say whether you can legally use it or not. And you stand a better chance of me not flinging a lot of expletives at you if you ask first and make sure you have a favorable reply from me second. And no, I really don't think Laura would have wanted everybody to be able to read my words on your site, just because you think she was so nice and all.

But about this The Long Winter radio show. It seems to me that anything produced and broadcast in 1951 is probably still under copyright and neither you nor I should be saving it and uploading and passing it along. As my father was always fond of saying, "Just because other people squat in the middle of the road, that doesn't mean it's okay for you to do it." Maybe I'm wrong and it really is in the public domain. Drop me a line if you know that it is.

I've had a link to the radio show on my The Long Winter book page a while now and I've gotten thanks but no complaints over the years, which still doesn't make it right (see quote above). I see that sites sell CDs of it online, and other sites tell you that it's okay to save it to your own computer. Whatever. I do a lot of left-click saving of books/articles/music/photographs in the name of research. Who am I to talk?

The Long Winter radio show was originally broadcast on March 15, 1951, as part of the Hallmark Playhouse series (on CBS). In order to advertise Hallmark greeting cards and thank listeners for buying lots and lots of them, the company began sponsoring a radio series in 1948 which featured well-known Hollywood stars. In December 1951, it jumped to television (on NBC) as Hallmark Television Playhouse and eventually became Hallmark Hall of Fame. UCLA Library houses scripts from both the radio and televison productions.

It was based on Laura Ingalls Wilder's book by the same name and was hosted by James Hilton, announced by Frank Goss, and directed and produced by Bill Gay. Lyn Murray composed and conducted the music. Axel Grindberg adapted Laura's book. It featured Edward Arnold (Pa), Lurene Tuttle (Ma), Anne Whitfield (Laura), Norma Jean Nilsson (Carrie), Ted Osborne, Lamont Johnson, Sam Edwards, and Parley Baer. Length of program was 29 minutes, 20 seconds. The first pageant in De Smet was a 1955 production based on this radio show, with members of the De Smet High School performing.

Enjoy.
- posted by pioneergirl at 3:36 PM