United States v. Arthur Blake Moore, Doing Business as Sound Distributors, Inc., Charles Frederic Moss and Gary Fields

These are consolidated appeals in which the defendants Arthur Moore, Charles Moss, and Gary Fields challenge their convictions for copyright infringement of sound recordings. Their primary contentions are that the evidence was insufficient to sustain their convictions and that the district court erroneously failed to apply the “first sale doctrine.” We affirm the convictions.

The defendants were each charged in a ten-count information with copyright infringement of sound recordings, in violation of former 17 U.S.C. § 1 (f) and 104(b). The evidence at the defendant’s jury trial showed that the defendants purchased large spools of eight-track recording tape, known as “pancakes,” in response to the advertisement of other distributors in Billboard Magazine. Each pancake contained a series of pre-recorded song sequences; approximately twenty albums were recorded on each tape. Attached to the pancakes were labels that stated that the albums on the pancakes were “sound-alikes”, i. e., recreations or imitations of the original as recorded by various well-known artists. The defendants would rewind and splice the pancakes into approximately twenty eight-track cartridges, and then wrap each…