Striking the Jolly Roger

When Columbia Records Inc. reissued some of its early Louis Armstrong recordings it ran into plenty of competition: some of the same records were already being sold by an obscure company called Paradox Industries, under the label "Jolly Roger." This pirate trademark was well justified, Columbia and Armstrong charged last week in a joint suit seeking to stop Paradox from selling the records and to collect damages. Paradox, they charged, had simply taken the old Columbia Armstrong records and pressed its own new ones from them.

To Columbia it was a clear-cut chance to make a court test of the growing business of record-pirating. In five years, said Columbia's President James B. Conkling, his men have tracked down the pirating of some 30 different brand-name records. Up to now, Columbia had never been able to sue because the pirate firms would skip town or change their names.

Paradox, a hole-in-the-wall outfit run by a 23-year-old Manhattan record collector named Dante Bolletino, showed no sign of doing either. Bolletino had his records made by RCA's "custom pressing" department, which turns out records for many small companies. Some of Bolletino's pressings were even pirated from RCA's own Armstrong records. Bolletino cheerfully admitted that he had pressed from the original Columbia-owned records. But he insisted that he had violated no law, since copyrights do not cover records. He had not copied Columbia's trademark, which would have been a violation.

Aware of the hole in copyright laws, Columbia based its suit on "invasion of property rights," and Armstrong based his on an "invasion of privacy" (i.e., using his name without permission).

Pirating has been given a big boost by magnetic-tape recording equipment. With it, pirates can record top artists and orchestras from radio or TV broadcasts, frequently have finished recordings ready for sale within a few days. They job them through a few legitimate stores, but mainly through shops dealing primarily in secondhand records. Long-playing records, which cost pirates only about $1 to $1.50 apiece to press, are retailed at anywhere from $2.50 to $5.95.

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