The Dallas version of USWA is where I saw Steve Austin for the first time feuding with Chris Adams. Jeannie had turned on Chris and joined up with Austin
I was always under the impression that the Memphis tapes are public domain now. Cornette mentioned that Lawler owns some tapes, but because he doesn’t have them all, and that they’re public domain, they have no monetary value, which is what Lawler’s original goal was, to sell the Memphis tapes to WWE
From what I've heard and read, there really isn't a tape library, because they would reuse the old tapes and tape over them. So what exists is by and large home recordings on VHS and Betamax tapes that are floating around. As far as the CWA/USWA ownership, I heard that Lawler owns the pre-USWA rights and Corey Maclin the USWA. But neither actually have much that can be called a tape library as such. I probably have more CWA/USWA "tapes" in my collection personally with somewhere north of a thousand shows total. Mostly the Evansville broadcast, a bit from the WMC broadcast in Memphis and a few from down in Texas. Jim Cornette might have the most complete set, since he has collected a bunch of home tapes.
I've still got a vhs recording of master op pain beating Lawler for the belt. That dang thing still played a couple years ago. Commercials and all but I have to play with the tracking. I need to preserve it and upload it.
"Public domain" in the sense that the chances of anyone suing you successfully over commercially exploiting the footage is approximately zero. But not quite zero enough to give WWE the confidence to buy the TV eps Lawler has.
Copyright hinges on authorship, not whoever happens to own the physical media, unless there was a legal agreement made by the author to assign the copyrights to another party. That's a lot more important to the WWE business model than the in-ring product. As for the existence of the physical footage, note the Lawler vs. Kaufman match on WWE's Lawler DVD set. They managed to include the entire thing, but had to use four different video sources to do so. Anyway, for your convenience, I'll repeat below the reply I made elsewhere in this thread. ______________ Key to that are the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988 and the Copyright Renewal Act of 1992. Also key is whether any episodes bore a visible copyright notice, which I don't recall ever seeing. If a piece of media contained a copyright notice, anything before January 1, 1964 is still copyrighted if the copyright was renewed in the 28th year. Anything since January 1, 1964 is still copyrighted as a result of the aforementioned Copyright Renewal Act. If a piece of media did not contain a copyright notice, anything before January 1, 1978 entered the public domain on that date as a result of the Copyright Act of 1976. Anything between January 1, 1978 and February 28, 1989 is still copyrighted if the copyright was registered within five years of publication. The United States became a party to the Berne Convention effective March 1, 1989. Copyrights from that date are automatic, no notice or registration required. Also, copyrights in the name of an individual have different term lengths than those in the name of a company.
This show is so entertaining, it's ridiculous. Dutch tells a story that's half truth, half Carney, and ALL interesting. In the meanwhile, James fills in blanks on boo boos and rolls with the story. I'm not sure what the secret recipe is for a great show, but this is it!
Hey Dutch, I hear you live in the Tampa bay area if it true i hope you and your family are safe from hurricane Milton. 1st time in 61 years that I evacuated. Once again my place had no damage just a couple of down branches and of course no electric since Wednesday 9:20 pm
Ok, i admit it. I own the rights. Bought them in a yard sale in Tupelo for twenty bucks. They're...around here somewhere, it's a bit cluttered if I'm honest.
Mark Selker and his associates (which doesn't include Burton) legally own everything related to Memphis wrestling. But they don't have physical possession of a tape library. They would however take to court anyone else who tries to sell tapes to any company. Everything related to this was settled in court many years ago.
Key to that are the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988 and the Copyright Renewal Act of 1992. Also key is whether any episodes bore a visible copyright notice, which I don't recall ever seeing. If a piece of media contained a copyright notice, anything before January 1, 1964 is still copyrighted if the copyright was renewed in the 28th year. Anything since January 1, 1964 is still copyrighted as a result of the aforementioned Copyright Renewal Act. If a piece of media did not contain a copyright notice, anything before January 1, 1978 entered the public domain on that date as a result of the Copyright Act of 1976. Anything between January 1, 1978 and February 28, 1989 is still copyrighted if the copyright was registered within five years of publication. The United States became a party to the Berne Convention effective March 1, 1989. Copyrights from that date are automatic, no notice or registration required. Also, copyrights in the name of an individual have different term lengths than those in the name of a company.
If they made it public domain, no one makes any money off of it, but the fans could get access to it via a number of platforms. The no one making any money off ot it makes it highly unlikely to become public domain though.
Cornette talked about this a few years ago. Apparently no one truly owns anything. It’s just whatever taped off their TVs at the time. Jarrett didn’t bring a camera to a lot of his shows and when he did he used the footage he needed to use for TV then tape over the show in question because he wasn’t Vince and didn’t see the value in home video. Corey Macklin did put a claim. He sold some footage to high spots to make a comp DVD. At a convention, a fan went over to Lawler to get him to sign the DvD asked where he got that and sued Macklin. The lawsuit was apparently still going on when Corey passed away. Shame because I loved watching the old Memphis TVs on RUclips, I can watch Lance Russell all day!!!
Is there no copyright because they didn't have "regular" master tapes and the ones they did use are split between various people that had a stake in Memphis at some point?
See my replies elsewhere in this thread. Copyright is based on authorship, not whoever happens to own the physical media at any given point in time. Was it ever established whether Jerry Jarrett or WMC was considered the author for the purposes of copyright? Things get a little murky when you're talking about works for hire.
How much footage is there? I thought that Jerry said there wasn't much. Dutch doesn't' know what Memphis wrestling was called? He said the same thing in a 2000 shoot.
I’m open to corrections, but the master copies of the 70’s & 80’s Memphis tape library is really what’s in question here, right? Ok, here’s my understanding: Back in those days, even well after VHS became a thing, the master copies were recorded on reels, and those cost like $200 a tape. So, most territories simply recorded on the same reel every week, because the tapes were so damn expensive. So each week they recorded, they were erasing the show of the previous week. Because of this, I personally believe there are no master copies of the Memphis tape library. The remaining footage that’s out there is all public domain, save for what people have stored up in their closets & such
The live 90-minute WMC program was recorded every week because they edited it into a 60-minute syndicated version. That syndicated program was aired on at least a half dozen stations. They could have staggered stations like other territories did (you've heard the term "bicycle", correct?) to cut down on the number of tapes floating around. 2-inch videotape was known to cost as much as $400-500 for a single tape during the 1970s. It was also notoriously unstable if the tapes weren't maintained. When Tojo Yamamoto died in 1992, one of the Nashville stations found a studio match from 1968 in their tape library. They remarked that the tape shredded as they were copying it over to a more modern format. Wiping was commonplace in television for those reasons. If wrestling fans think it was a problem, consider that the BBC routinely wiped programming simply because the Queen didn't like it. When 1-inch videotape came along, it solved much of the problem. As far "no tapes existed", Rick Crane (70s TV site) and Jeff Osborne (Evansville superfan and former dirtsheet publisher) went searching for tapes and apparently found some Umatic reels that local affiliates still had. Crane sells a number of them through his site. As for copyright, I've already addressed that extensively. Copyright rests with the author. I don't believe it was ever determined whether Jerry Jarrett or WMC was considered the author for the purposes of copyright.
Pretty sure memphos rerecorded over the masters...but lawler meticulously recorded every show during set periods of time. So what lawler owns is not the originals, but they are tapes. Since there is no copyright id expect it to all be public domain, so lawler could likely use it, but not sell it.
you were basically buying air. there was nothing to buy once lawler or jarett "sold" it they could just change name start up new company with same wrestlers
Wrong. Anything published since March 1, 1989 is considered automatically copyrighted per the US's participation in the Berne Convention. The copyright holder would have to release those episodes into the public domain. See the fairly recent case of Tom Lehrer for an example of how that's done. Since we don't know who the copyright holder is in this case, that isn't likely to happen.
@@kevinbbadd Tell us you're full of shit without telling us you're full of shit. You're probably one more person who honestly believes that the copyright holder = whoever happens to own the tapes right now.
Cornette has addressed it before. No one has a valid claim because no one ever thought to document the ownership of something that all involved thought were worthless.
AFAIK, Lawler and Cornette "own" some old arena footage and television tapes, but none of them have contracts from the original creators assigning them rights. Jarrett has nothing. Jerry sold his shares to Lawler, who sold his shares to the conman. It's just a giant mess. Wrestling fans benefit because everything that is available is on RUclips for free.
Cornette owns a bunch and I have heard him say that his friend (cant remember his name off hand) has almost everything that wasn't erased or taped over by the company itself to use the tape again . That is a pretty cheap move if you ask me lol !
I know I'm in a growing minority with this but I love hearing about this old shit.
Me too. This bts look is awesome. And Dutch has a long history in pro wrestling, so we can hear stuff from the 70s, up to today.
Because these guys back in the day protected the business, so we never heard this stuff until recently in the last decade or so
I’m right there with you !
No, hearing these old stories is the only connection left to those "good ole days"
Listen to Jim Cornette, he covers loads of this stuff going back right to the earliest days of professional wrestling.
The Dallas version of USWA is where I saw Steve Austin for the first time feuding with Chris Adams. Jeannie had turned on Chris and joined up with Austin
Corey Maclin own his version on MW Randy Hales owns PPW
I'm pretty sure I own it. Went on a bender one night and got a lot of notifications from PayPal. Stand by.
I was always under the impression that the Memphis tapes are public domain now. Cornette mentioned that Lawler owns some tapes, but because he doesn’t have them all, and that they’re public domain, they have no monetary value, which is what Lawler’s original goal was, to sell the Memphis tapes to WWE
From what I've heard and read, there really isn't a tape library, because they would reuse the old tapes and tape over them. So what exists is by and large home recordings on VHS and Betamax tapes that are floating around.
As far as the CWA/USWA ownership, I heard that Lawler owns the pre-USWA rights and Corey Maclin the USWA. But neither actually have much that can be called a tape library as such. I probably have more CWA/USWA "tapes" in my collection personally with somewhere north of a thousand shows total. Mostly the Evansville broadcast, a bit from the WMC broadcast in Memphis and a few from down in Texas. Jim Cornette might have the most complete set, since he has collected a bunch of home tapes.
I've still got a vhs recording of master op pain beating Lawler for the belt. That dang thing still played a couple years ago. Commercials and all but I have to play with the tracking. I need to preserve it and upload it.
@@drg5352 yeah, most of what’s out there in RUclips are just VHS tapes not television tapes from a network
"Public domain" in the sense that the chances of anyone suing you successfully over commercially exploiting the footage is approximately zero. But not quite zero enough to give WWE the confidence to buy the TV eps Lawler has.
Copyright hinges on authorship, not whoever happens to own the physical media, unless there was a legal agreement made by the author to assign the copyrights to another party. That's a lot more important to the WWE business model than the in-ring product. As for the existence of the physical footage, note the Lawler vs. Kaufman match on WWE's Lawler DVD set. They managed to include the entire thing, but had to use four different video sources to do so.
Anyway, for your convenience, I'll repeat below the reply I made elsewhere in this thread.
______________
Key to that are the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988 and the Copyright Renewal Act of 1992. Also key is whether any episodes bore a visible copyright notice, which I don't recall ever seeing.
If a piece of media contained a copyright notice, anything before January 1, 1964 is still copyrighted if the copyright was renewed in the 28th year. Anything since January 1, 1964 is still copyrighted as a result of the aforementioned Copyright Renewal Act.
If a piece of media did not contain a copyright notice, anything before January 1, 1978 entered the public domain on that date as a result of the Copyright Act of 1976. Anything between January 1, 1978 and February 28, 1989 is still copyrighted if the copyright was registered within five years of publication.
The United States became a party to the Berne Convention effective March 1, 1989. Copyrights from that date are automatic, no notice or registration required. Also, copyrights in the name of an individual have different term lengths than those in the name of a company.
Classic Allstar Wrestling with Adam Pearce uses a lot of Memphis footage on his show. I watch it on Roku.
Hell Yes! do whole watch alongs and show all the footage
This show is so entertaining, it's ridiculous. Dutch tells a story that's half truth, half Carney, and ALL interesting. In the meanwhile, James fills in blanks on boo boos and rolls with the story. I'm not sure what the secret recipe is for a great show, but this is it!
I read articles with Jerry Lawter he says he owns 1976 to 80 and 1988 to 1996 part of that Library.
Hey Dutch, I hear you live in the Tampa bay area if it true i hope you and your family are safe from hurricane Milton. 1st time in 61 years that I evacuated. Once again my place had no damage just a couple of down branches and of course no electric since Wednesday 9:20 pm
Ok, i admit it. I own the rights. Bought them in a yard sale in Tupelo for twenty bucks. They're...around here somewhere, it's a bit cluttered if I'm honest.
To save money the Jarretts would erase those tapes an re-recorded over them… so there long gone.
Lololol😂
I've heard this b4 ... fukn foolish...
My first guitar was named after Dutch's bull whip, Shoo-Baby.
Mark Selker and his associates (which doesn't include Burton) legally own everything related to Memphis wrestling. But they don't have physical possession of a tape library. They would however take to court anyone else who tries to sell tapes to any company.
Everything related to this was settled in court many years ago.
Many people do sell tapes to this day
@@adamluce1901 They sell tapes informally in the grey market. But nobody is going to be able to do more than that.
@Jim-Tuner i have seen memphis on a classic wrestling show that aired on alot of the regional sports channels and I've seen people sell dvds
Corey maclin died in a car crash in 2013
If the copy right has never been renewed, then by now it's public domain.
Key to that are the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988 and the Copyright Renewal Act of 1992. Also key is whether any episodes bore a visible copyright notice, which I don't recall ever seeing.
If a piece of media contained a copyright notice, anything before January 1, 1964 is still copyrighted if the copyright was renewed in the 28th year. Anything since January 1, 1964 is still copyrighted as a result of the aforementioned Copyright Renewal Act.
If a piece of media did not contain a copyright notice, anything before January 1, 1978 entered the public domain on that date as a result of the Copyright Act of 1976. Anything between January 1, 1978 and February 28, 1989 is still copyrighted if the copyright was registered within five years of publication.
The United States became a party to the Berne Convention effective March 1, 1989. Copyrights from that date are automatic, no notice or registration required. Also, copyrights in the name of an individual have different term lengths than those in the name of a company.
Fuller had CWA in Alabama
and Florida
If they made it public domain, no one makes any money off of it, but the fans could get access to it via a number of platforms. The no one making any money off ot it makes it highly unlikely to become public domain though.
Cornette talked about this a few years ago. Apparently no one truly owns anything. It’s just whatever taped off their TVs at the time. Jarrett didn’t bring a camera to a lot of his shows and when he did he used the footage he needed to use for TV then tape over the show in question because he wasn’t Vince and didn’t see the value in home video.
Corey Macklin did put a claim. He sold some footage to high spots to make a comp DVD. At a convention, a fan went over to Lawler to get him to sign the DvD asked where he got that and sued Macklin. The lawsuit was apparently still going on when Corey passed away.
Shame because I loved watching the old Memphis TVs on RUclips, I can watch Lance Russell all day!!!
Is there no copyright because they didn't have "regular" master tapes and the ones they did use are split between various people that had a stake in Memphis at some point?
See my replies elsewhere in this thread. Copyright is based on authorship, not whoever happens to own the physical media at any given point in time. Was it ever established whether Jerry Jarrett or WMC was considered the author for the purposes of copyright? Things get a little murky when you're talking about works for hire.
I traded for many years of it back in my tape trading days .
I miss the original Memphis wrestling
How much footage is there? I thought that Jerry said there wasn't much. Dutch doesn't' know what Memphis wrestling was called? He said the same thing in a 2000 shoot.
Carneys and marks and story as old as time.
I’m open to corrections, but the master copies of the 70’s & 80’s Memphis tape library is really what’s in question here, right? Ok, here’s my understanding: Back in those days, even well after VHS became a thing, the master copies were recorded on reels, and those cost like $200 a tape. So, most territories simply recorded on the same reel every week, because the tapes were so damn expensive. So each week they recorded, they were erasing the show of the previous week. Because of this, I personally believe there are no master copies of the Memphis tape library. The remaining footage that’s out there is all public domain, save for what people have stored up in their closets & such
The live 90-minute WMC program was recorded every week because they edited it into a 60-minute syndicated version. That syndicated program was aired on at least a half dozen stations. They could have staggered stations like other territories did (you've heard the term "bicycle", correct?) to cut down on the number of tapes floating around.
2-inch videotape was known to cost as much as $400-500 for a single tape during the 1970s. It was also notoriously unstable if the tapes weren't maintained. When Tojo Yamamoto died in 1992, one of the Nashville stations found a studio match from 1968 in their tape library. They remarked that the tape shredded as they were copying it over to a more modern format.
Wiping was commonplace in television for those reasons. If wrestling fans think it was a problem, consider that the BBC routinely wiped programming simply because the Queen didn't like it. When 1-inch videotape came along, it solved much of the problem.
As far "no tapes existed", Rick Crane (70s TV site) and Jeff Osborne (Evansville superfan and former dirtsheet publisher) went searching for tapes and apparently found some Umatic reels that local affiliates still had. Crane sells a number of them through his site.
As for copyright, I've already addressed that extensively. Copyright rests with the author. I don't believe it was ever determined whether Jerry Jarrett or WMC was considered the author for the purposes of copyright.
If Lawler doesn't own it, maybe Randy Hales does.
Good guy!!!! I jumped on his show on YT time to time! TY Randy!!!!!!
Randy owns the power pro years I don't know about the rest
Pretty sure memphos rerecorded over the masters...but lawler meticulously recorded every show during set periods of time. So what lawler owns is not the originals, but they are tapes.
Since there is no copyright id expect it to all be public domain, so lawler could likely use it, but not sell it.
Did Goulas have a claim or was he out at that point?
Bring back Memphis wrestling. It was better than the WWE and AEW stuff that is foisted upon us on TV nowadays.
I thought that was Carl from family matters 😂
He is known as ed powell on you tube
As long as the WWE (Endeavor TKO) doesn't own it.
One USWA. The Dallas USWA is Memphis Wrestling 😂. Same company.
you were basically buying air. there was nothing to buy once lawler or jarett "sold" it they could just change name start up new company with same wrestlers
USWA is public domain.
Wrong. Anything published since March 1, 1989 is considered automatically copyrighted per the US's participation in the Berne Convention. The copyright holder would have to release those episodes into the public domain. See the fairly recent case of Tom Lehrer for an example of how that's done. Since we don't know who the copyright holder is in this case, that isn't likely to happen.
@@MisterBeauJanGelswrong
@@kevinbbadd Okay, then explain yourself like I did. Telling the other person they're wrong without bothering to say what's right is worthless.
@@MisterBeauJanGelsit's over your head
@@kevinbbadd Tell us you're full of shit without telling us you're full of shit. You're probably one more person who honestly believes that the copyright holder = whoever happens to own the tapes right now.
ok, now I really wanna here Cornette’s take on this
Cornette has addressed it before. No one has a valid claim because no one ever thought to document the ownership of something that all involved thought were worthless.
If Dutch wants 2K for the belt, hit me up. Conrad shouldn't own everything 😂
Does Dustin Starr own them?
I'm shure Vince owns it somehow.
Jerry Jarret does not own it I asked him Personally
Dream Machine!!!!
Lawler owns some , Cornette owns some - Jeff Jarrett must have inherited part of the Library of the older stuff when his dad passed ?
AFAIK, Lawler and Cornette "own" some old arena footage and television tapes, but none of them have contracts from the original creators assigning them rights.
Jarrett has nothing. Jerry sold his shares to Lawler, who sold his shares to the conman.
It's just a giant mess. Wrestling fans benefit because everything that is available is on RUclips for free.
I'm sure Jerry Lawler owns them.
The old wrestling is all there is to talk about. I don’t watch this junk today. Who wants to talk about this junk today?
Im with you 100%
Cornette owns a bunch and I have heard him say that his friend (cant remember his name off hand) has almost everything that wasn't erased or taped over by the company itself to use the tape again . That is a pretty cheap move if you ask me lol !
Norman dooley
@@adamluce1901 Yeah , I knew Norman was Jim's childhood friend , I just couldn't remember if that was the same guy I was thinking of or not .
Weasel Dooley!!!
Cory maclin sucks
He did buy that particular company. But mempho wrestling is getting good again.
@@djredshowi disagree, cheap phony horseshit
Ask Cornette, seriously. He'd probably know