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European Copyrights Expire; RIAA Nervous
colmore writes "This article in today's New York Times (free reg. req.) discusses the expiration of European copyrights for recordings made in the 1950s. Now "bootleg" labels can legitimately print a lot of still-popular early rock, country, jazz, and classical albums. The good folks at the RIAA are trying to establish stricter customs controls. So does this mean cheap Elvis or a diluted pool of products?"
The RIAA is the Recording Industry Ass'n of the AMERICAS... but you can bet anything they'll try to get their fingers into that one. If there was an RIAE (Europe) in the 1450's, Gutenberg would have been shot and his press burned.
Well, what I would like to see is a lot of european bands doing their own versions of the songs as they no longer have to have permission of the original copyright holders. Many copyright holders of those older songs have been very reluctant and restrictive to allow other artists to record and publish them. so I predict a wave of creativity in ways of making updated 50's tunes from european bands. It may be quite interesting what they come up with.
If you think that society will fall apart without the stratifying influence of capitalism, and that the idea of intellectual property is necessary for the continued prosperity of the US, I say that's b.s. and there are other possible viable economic models.
There are no trolls. There are no trees out here.
That's another annoyance of DRM - it doesn't disable when the copyright expires. It's de-facto permanent copyright.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Think about what Turkewitz is saying. Importing public domain material from Europe to the US is piracy.
I'm sure Neil firmly believes what he is saying, and that Jack Valenti firmly believes watching tv without watching the commercials is "theft of programming." These people live in a COMPLETELY unreal world, which is why we have to make them shut the hell up and go away, instead of letting them write our laws for us. This is why you should not buy RIAA music. Pay to listen to local bands, support musicians that distribute their own music online, ignore the RIAA-created fantasy world of big-time music and let the RIAA shrivel up and die.
all this means is that lessig is right in eldred v. ashcroft.
copyrights should foster innovation. that is the only reason they should exist. they should exist to line corporate pockets. so they should expire with the death of the author. if corporations via sonny bono extend them unnaturally beyond the lifetime of the author, then copyrights instead suppress innovation. 50 years? 95 years? whatever. copyrights should rightly expire when the author is rip.
this expired here but not there bs is just another example of why extending copyrights unnaturally by greedy corporations is a bad idea.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Close, but wrong. "Xerox" and "Kleenex" were diluted because people began to use them to refer to photocopies (mimeographs?) and nose-tissues that were not produced by these companies.
Since the conventinal usage of "Google" seems to refer specifically and exclusively to Google's own services, there's no dilution here.
To "Google" something doesn't mean "to search for it using an arbitrary search engine". It means "to use Google's search engine".
Nobody in their right mind would think of using "Google" to mean "Lycos", or "Alta Vista".
I think the dilution of Xerox and Kleenex came about because the competing products were of similar appearance, quality, function, and availability. Xerox photocopies were conceptually interchangeable with Ricoh's, and Canon's, &c. On the other hand, I don't think anybody's going to confuse Google with Inktomi.
Rather than diluting the brand, the verbing of "Google" indicates increasing mindshare--the more their brand becomes a part of everyday conversation, the better off they are. So long as their product remains distinctly superior to the competition, of course.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
I think another big problem is that the RIAA is saying that the copied works in Europe are still piracy, even thought its perfectly legal to do so in the EU.
I wonder if we can call the act of copyright cartels and corporations trying to prevent a work from entering the public domain [via buying laws/politicians or whatever means] an act of piracy?
It would seem that they're taking what is intended for us, hijacking it as it's on it's way to us, and keeping it for themselves.
That sounds closer to the original definition of piracy, than copying a mate's cd.
Hilary Rosen and Senator Hollins are supporters of piracy.
Doesn't that just sound right ?
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce