ABSTRACT
At a music business conference in Liverpool during the early 1990s an anecdote was circulating about a new clause in recording contracts. Having introduced an amendment giving themselves the rights to any future sound carrier yet to be invented (following the lengthy royalty negotiations that were required to modify contracts when the introduction of CD caught the business unprepared), record companies were now including a clause which assigned them the rights to any material circulated in territories beyond the Earth. Music companies were not prepared to take the slightest risk that they might lose income as a consequence of future extraterrestrial travel opening up even more markets.
