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?"

Comments

Re:Yes, it's the same.

[I'm a racist.]

The problem in America is that Congress has implemented retroactive extensions to copyrights.

What this means is that someone created some content, at year 0, with full knowledge that the copyright would expire in X years. At year (X - 1), Congress extends copyrights to (X + Y) years. Now, said content is still under copyright until year (X + Y), even though it's creator had accepted the fact that it would fall into the public domain at year X.

This is what Lessig was in front of the Supreme Court for. Congress can arbitrarily apply a copyright extension every time a chunk of media (eg. "Steamboat Willie", owned by Disney - the first appearance of Mickey Mouse) is about to fall into the public domain.

Clearly, Walt was okay with the idea of Mickey becoming public domain in X years, but Eisner sees things a bit differently...

Price cuts? Yeah right.

[poot_rootbeer]

The correct response to combat an influx of recordings imported from countries where the copyrights have expired would be to SLASH PRICES on domestic copies of these same 50-year-old recordings. Sell an Elvis CD for $3.99 and there's no incentive for consumers to pay $5.99 (to cover shipping costs) for the identical CD from a European label.

Unfortunately, the RIAA and their constituent member record labels have grown so accustomed to using legislation as a weapon against their own sales base (that's US, yo) that the idea of selling CDs for cheap (it doesn't even have to be at a loss, they could still profit healthily) hasn't even crossed their minds as a way of maintaining their market share.

All is as it should be in europe

[Black Copter Control]

This was the original intent of the Copyright ammendment to the constitution -- to ensure that works were made so that they could, after "a limited period of time", be passed into the public domain for all people to enjoy.

When those works were created in the '50s, it was with the understanding that their copyright would only continue for a couple of decades -- not for a couple of centuries. There appeared to be sufficient economic incentives to create them back then. Now that they're legitimitely PD in Europe, I think that that's a good thing.

It's the people who want to keep these recordings out of the public domain that are the real pirates.

jazz

[bcrowell]

One of the things that send jazz into a retreat in the 1950's and 60's was that before then, there had been a lot of opportunities for jazz musicians to hear each other and play with each other. But around that time, it started getting much more expensive to go to jazz clubs. Also, the number of venues got below critical mass, even in Manhattan, so you could no longer walk from bar to bar and hear Dizzy Gillespie in one place, then Thelonious Monk in another.

Now a lot of the jazz catalog is public domain in Europe, while in the U.S. we're limited to pre-1922 dreck like Moonlight Bay.

It would be really cool if jazz could start to flourish again in Europe via the internet, with people being able to trade their recordings of songs, broadcast their gigs via internet radio, etc.

Re:Yes, it's the same.

[AragornSonOfArathorn]

I am not one to defend Corporate America, but if you were Eisner, wouldnt you do the same? If one of the cornerstones of your business were to all of a sudden become freely reproducible, wouldnt you try to stop that from happening?...

Will having "Steamboat Willie" (or any other equally old work) in the public domain really hurt the copyright holder? Is there really so much demand for Steamboat Willie tapes, DVDs, T-shirts, cereal, and whatnot that if it was freely available it would really affect their bottom line? Ok, I'm exaggerating slightly, but my point is some media company's (like Disney's) whole operation is not going to come crashing down if some near-100 year old work is in the public domain.

So what are they going to do ...

[scharkalvin]

When Europeans start LEGALLY posting MP3's of this material on the internet? After all it IS legal in Europe so those countries don't have to demand this stuff be banned from the 'net. Oh it's illegal here in the states, well foo on you!

I think that copyrights on books, music, plays (any performance or written art) should only be legally held by individuals NOT corporations and the copyright limited in term to the lifetime of that individual. IOW it becomes public domain AFTER the copyright holders death.

Now when it comes to things like movies where there isn't a single person to claim the copyright things do get a little muddy, but since a human lifetime is about 72 years on average and a person might copyright something at anytime during that lifetime set the life of a corporate copyright on
art at something between 50-75 years NO LONGER!!!!

Re:RIAA

[Arrgh]

Gutenberg printed Bibles in Latin; it was Martin Luther who translated them into German and printed them for "ordinary" people. Here's a fun quote from Neil Postman's Technopoly:

"Gutenberg, for example, was by all accounts a devout Catholic who would have been horrified to hear that accursed heretic Luther describe printing as 'God's highest act of grace, whereby the business of the Gospel is driven forward.' Luther understood, as Gutenberg did not, that the mass-produced book, by placing the Word of God on every kitchen table, makes each Christian his own thrologian -- one might even say his own priest.... In the struggle between unity and diversity of relgious belief, the press favored the latter, and we can assume that this possibility never occured to Gutenberg."

Next time you need something nitpicked to death, you know who to call. ;)

Re:Yes, it's the same.

[Blue Stone]

If Mickey Mouse is a trademark, Disney have failed to aggressively defend it.
There's at least two instances where Mad Magazine have parodied Mickey Mouse (Mickey Rodent) using exact copies of his, and Donald's, Goofy's and Pluto's image, for the purposes of parody, which isn't allowed under Trademark Law, I believe.

The cartoons went unchallenged, and were created in the early 50's, so their Trademark could be argued to have lapsed. [IANAL etc.]

Re:It's really a contract with the public...

[AKnightCowboy]

Well, but you have to see it from their perspective. They created content (or signed acts that created content) that brings in millions of dollars a year. Why should they have to suddenly at some arbitrary date no longer be able to exploit their intellectual property? It's like building a house and after 95 years of owning your house it suddenly becomes a historical landmark and you're evicted by the county. WTF? Wouldn't YOU be a little pissed off at getting kicked out of your house and having tourists romp around it? The world operates on the principle of intellectual property more than ever today. Trillions of dollars of the economies of countries of the world revolves around this idea that a person's ideas are property and that they can exploit it as they wish without another stealing it. I wouldn't be suprised if in the future copyright expiration in the USA is abolished entirely. Don't get me wrong, I don't support this by any stretch of the imagination. I'm just trying to play Devil's advocate.