Societe Le Chant du Monde v. Societe Fox Europe and Societe Fox Americaine Twentieth Century is a French case had the same facts as the New York case Shostakovich v. Twentieth Century-Fox

Shostakovich v. Twentieth Century-Fox

Shostakovich v. Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp., 80 N.Y.S.2d 575 , aff'd, 87 N.Y.S.2d 430 , was a copyright lawsuit...

, wherein four Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

s sued Fox to prevent the use of their public domain compositions in an anti-Communist

Communism

Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...

 film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

. The New York court presciently summed up the future holding of the French court, where it predicted that droit moral could "prevent the use of a composition or work, in the public domain." The film was ordered seized.

Russian music for many decades was in the public domain in the United States and western Europe, as a form of payback

Revenge

Revenge is a harmful action against a person or group in response to a grievance, be it real or perceived. It is also called payback, retribution, retaliation or vengeance; it may be characterized, justly or unjustly, as a form of justice.-Function in society:Some societies believe that the...

 for the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 not recognizing western copyright

Copyright

Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...

s.

Normally authors will be long dead before their works come into the public domain, however depending on the country there is authority that authors may dedicate their works to the public domain

Public domain

Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...

voluntarily. The Shostakovich and Le Chant du Monde problem, therefore is still with us. The problem is that voluntarily dedicated works may not truly be freely available for modification or even aggregation (the music in Le Chant du Monde was merely a motion picture soundtrack) until the author is dead, even though the works quite clearly are in the public domain.

This case was discussed in Strauss, The Moral Right of the Author, 4 Am. J. Comp. L. 506, 534-35 n.56 (1955).