If anybody cares…I managed to find the provision which permits UK music labels to issue, both on CD and as downloads, music taken from radio and television broadcasts originating from within the United States.

It is not (exactly) in the main source for UK copyright law (the “Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988”) but in Statutory Instrument 2006 No. 316 "The Copyright and Performances (Application to Other Countries) Order 2006".

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2006/316/made

Under Section 4, “Wireless Broadcasts”, Paragraph (3) states that “The provisions of Part 1 of the Act do not apply in relation to a wireless broadcast made from a place in a country, referred to in paragraph (4), before the relevant date.”

Subsection (b) to Paragraph (4) provides that “The relevant date in relation to a country where its entry in the fourth column of the table set out in the Schedule includes a “(Y)”, is 1st January 1996.”

And indeed, when consulting the scheduled attached to Statutory Instrument 2006 No. 316, the fourth column for the United States contains the aforementioned “(Y)”.

Obviously there are many other factors that I’m still trying to figure out here; all I know is that after a week of looking, I finally found out exactly what the threshold date is and, even more importantly, where it is written down.

Can those items be legally sold in the USA? (Factory pressed cd's & dvd's of the pre 1996 broadcasts that were manufactured in the UK)?

17 U.S.C. §602 "Infringing importation or exportation of copies or phonorecords" addresses this. §602(a)(3)(B) allows "copies or phonorecords of a work that have been acquired outside the United States" to be imported into the U.S. "without the authority of the owner of copyright" if they are for "for the private use of the importer or exporter and not for distribution, by any person with respect to no more than one copy or phonorecord of any one work at any one time, or by any person arriving from outside the United States or departing from the United States with respect to copies or phonorecords forming part of such person’s personal baggage." This usually isn't a problem; in fact, this is why Japanese CD's especially tend to have exclusive tracks and elaborate packaging--to dissuade the Japanese from buying cheaper US import versions of the same titles.

Subsection (b), however, seems pretty clear: "In a case where the copies or phonorecords were lawfully made, United States Customs and Border Protection has no authority to prevent their importation." However, "the Secretary of the Treasury is authorized to prescribe, by regulation, a procedure under which any person claiming an interest in the copyright in a particular work may, upon payment of a specified fee, be entitled to notification by United States Customs and Border Protection of the importation of articles that appear to be copies or phonorecords of the work."

I don't know if that by itself is enough to discourage places like F.Y.E. from stocking these UK titles; I seem to recall Springsteen threatening litigation over the U.S. sale of one of these initial titles (I believe it was "Transmissions") but I'll be darned if I can find an archived news article on the matter. But I'm still digging here.

As far as non PD titles (in this case non broadcast titles), I can tell you that the record co's lost to Jem in court regarding "parallel imports" in the 80's. (The same album issued legally by (usually) the same major label in another country with or without bonus tracks).

At the time, the reason for both the practice & the law suit is that USA vinyl pressings were considered (& usually were in fact) inferior to both most European & Japanese pressings.

My understanding is that though JEM (the super D of their time minus the evil) won the law suit, the legal costs (which they were not reimbursed) put them out of business.

Sorry I have no citations to back this up; I was in the industry at the time & this case was considered common knowledge.