It appears that the British Library have now placed these recordings on their web site as they are out of copyright (1929).

English Conversation: At the Tobacconist's

http://sounds.bl.uk/View.aspx?item=024M-1CS0011556XX-0200V0.xml

English Conversation: Wireless

http://sounds.bl.uk/View.aspx?item=024M-1CS0011570XX-0200V0.xml

I thought these were the only two recordings with Tolkien on them but they also list another two recordings (these seem to be in error as Tolkien does not appear to be on either recording). UPDATE The two recordings below are no longer listed as by Tolkien.


English Conversation: The big stores

http://sounds.bl.uk/View.aspx?item=024M-1CS0011556XX-0100V0.xml

English Conversation: The Theatre

http://sounds.bl.uk/View.aspx?item=024M-1CS0011570XX-0100V0.xml

Thanks for posting these, Trotter. You are correct, it is only the first two recordings in your list that have Tolkien speaking on them.

The British Library is preventing anyone outside the UK from being able to play these files, though you can still see the rest of the page. Please contact me offline if anyone would like to discuss this issue further.

UK Copyright law for Sound Recordings is 50 years from the date of the recording, so no UK copyright exists on these recordings.

It looks like the British Library have entered into a deal with Linguaphone to use all their archive recordings and have only licensed it for the UK and for streaming not download only.

I have done some more research into this and the digital copies of the sound recordings on the British Library web site are under copyright by the British Library and Linguaphone, the copyright on this digital recording runs out in 2059. As they own the copyright on this digital copy then they can restrict its use to streaming only. I wrote to the British Library and asked them to make it available for streaming outside of the UK and it looks like they have done that, you can stream it from the US at any rate now.

The interesting point as I made earlier is that the original 78 record from 1929 is out of copyright, under UK law it expired in 1979 fifty years after that recording was made, and because it is out of copyright anyone who has access to the original record can make copies including a digital copy. If this digital copy was assigned a license such as Creative Commons License then this copy could be made available to anyone and for instance hosted on archive.org or possibly on the Tolkien Collector's Guide

Is anyone on the board able to make a digital copy of these two tracks from the original 78?

Andrew