[Upd-discuss] copyrighting out of copyright properties

[Richard M. Stallman]

    I have the idea the above scenario is possible under current copyright 
    law.  Is t his correct?  And if it is, is it a viable solution to assume 
    a sort of copyright on my digitized versions of the songs, and make them 
    available via a Creative Commons "share music"  licence?

There's nothing wrong with the that particular license, as regards its
terms.  But I would not use it with the "Creative Commons" label.
People tend to treat everything labeled "Creative Commons" as a unit,
so that using one of their licenses has the inevitable side-effect of
promoting everything Creative Commons does.

That now includes certain licenses which do not permit people in the
US and Europe even to share verbatim copies.  (Specifically are the
Developing Nations licenses and at least some of the Sampling
licenses.)  When I found out about this, I decided I should not
support Creative Commons any longer.

I am not a lawyer, so I will leave to others with more knowledge the
question whether the cleaned-up versions will be copyrightable or what
that might actually cover.