Copyright on music is one of the thornier areas of the law: to start with there's the dual nature of music copyrights (both the composition and the specific rec

Copyright on music is one of the thornier areas of the law: to start with there's the dual nature of music copyrights (both the composition and the specific recording have a copyright). Possibly even more relevant here, sound recordings only came into the federal regime relatively recently in the 70s, leaving the works created before then to a hodgepodge of state laws. The Archive is taking a fair use stance here, but as with some of their other projects there's a significant "ask for forgiveness, not permission" element at work as well.