Is CD Mastering Copyrightable?

Many of the oft pirated performances are actually quite easy to identify. There's no mistaking a Furtwangler performance. The problem, as lil.fred mentioned, is that the performances and music is all public domain.

The bootleggers know that a small company like M&A or Tarah won't have the funds to send lawyers after them, so they'll get away with ripping off these expensive restorations and re-packaging them.
There are a lot of Toscanini bootlegs floating around, mostly all from restorations of broadcasts that legit small companies put out. You probably won't see a bootleg of a BMG Toscanini recording because they know BMG has the legal department to bury them alive.

Dan C

 

Ed, I don't see the problem in telling Previn's from Steinberg's "Planets." Discographers routinely identify performances (by the same conductor, that is) by ear.

And it's not so hard to distinguish piracies of transfers from analog sources, either (which are the only sources that are out of copyright): the placement of the clicks & pops, for example; the editing work that is done in "joining sides" of 78s; the very wave form, if it comes to that, should do the trick most of the time.