Slashdot Mirror
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?"
Does this work the same way in the US? Is older music no longer copyrighted? I assume this is NOT the case, or else P2P networks would have alot more legitimacy. Will US music ever go into the public domain?
So you're saying that this might actually degrade quality of songs that were made before the digital age?
The reproduction will be near flawless; in fact, wouldn't they be able to reproduce the new Elvis Greatest Hits thing? Or by re-mastering it, do they create a new copyright on said recordings?
"It looks like he's shipping his grandmother a CD-R of 'Rock Around the Clock' remixed 13 times... ARREST THIS MAN!"
-- People who hate Windows use Linux. People who love UNIX use BSD.
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.
I thought that the 95 years was to match the European Copyright system.
Where the heck did I get that idea?
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
Yeah, but, I just don't think Elvis sounds as good when he's been translated to French.
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
I never thought I would see in my own lifetime a copyright expire. Honestly, this is an interesting feeling that I can legally use some music of my culture I grew up with without being charged with a crime to do so? Except, this probably doesn't help me much since I live in America, eh? *sigh*
Bel, the mostly sane.. "Of course I can't see anything! I'm standing on the shoulders of idiots." -- Me
[..] So does this mean cheap Elvis or a diluted pool of products?"
Well, both actually. There will be junk albums with 1950 hits & lot's of junk to fill up, but also there'll be good cheap Elvis albums too.
But it said Europian rights were expiaring...Does this mean that you can only sell this music in Europe? Or only music recorded in Europe? Anyone know how this works?
Moderation: +4. Modded 70% Funny and 30% Overrated. 100% Saturated.
Why would the RIAA care? First, the A in RIAA America (ok, the second A). Also, do they not want people trading legally? I see no wrong doing in this.
"The import of those products would be an act of piracy," said Neil Turkewitz, the executive vice president international for the Recording Industry Association of America, which has strongly advocated for copyright protections. "The industry is regretful that these absolutely piratical products are being released."
I'm quite regretful that such stupidical comments can make the NYT
Any music that has an expired copyright is of the public domain.
However, the RIAA & MPAA and other organizations have government backing, and have extended United States copyright laws well beyond the European 50 or so. I believe the current law is 95 years in America, and it can only be made longer by our wonderfully corrupt politicians.
Can I have like, +5 for calling politicians corrupt? Everybody else gets points for just spouting crap, and as long as they say something against the "system" they get hella points. Oh well.
Wasn't one of the reasons Congress extended copyrights in the US to bring them in line with the longer European copyrights? What copyrights were those?
From yahoo
What, me Tweet?
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.
Are their any existing laws that would prevent me from bringing something back here for personal use?
-- James Dornan
-- Prepared at the direction of, or to be sent to Legal Counsel, in anticipation of litigation. Attorney Client Pri
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.
Most copyrights in Europe have 70 years. AFAIK there is something about works of the British Crown with longer periods.
The USA had shorter periods, then extended to 70 years to match the Geneva rules, and *then*, with the Sonny Bono/Micky Mouse Copyright Term Extension Act, went over to 90-95 years.
Computers. You can't live with them, you can't live without them.
My understanding was that recordings in the US weren't even covered by copyright until 1972 or so.
Now i'm going to do some googling...
February 15, 1972
Effective date of act extending limited copyright protection to sound recordings fixed and first published on or after this date.
For reference
Hmm. Now, if i'm reading this right, the actual sound recordings of pre-1972 music aren't even covered by copyright and probably are freely redistributable, right? Which means...who cares about the Euro copyrights from a US perspective?
Kindly correct me if i'm wrong.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
So where is a euro website where i can i download all these tracks?
The RIAA isn't really worried about "bootlegs" or "pirate material" (if it's not copyrighted how can it be "pirated") anyways they're just scared that some kid will make a website with all the newly freed songs on it and they won't be able to a god damn thing.
The RIAA belives that since you can now legally make copies of songs from the 50's in Europe that no one in America will buy their overpriced American copies in favor of the cheaper public domain European versions. So they want more control at our borders. Damn the RIAA, US copyrights should be expiring, damn the Bono Amendment.
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.
For crying out loud... only 50 years?! Poor Elvis, he is going to have to stop collecting European royalties from his music. Luckily, he can still collect money from Americans. I wouldn't want Elvis to have to get another job. What will he do? Start flipping burgers?
Sex - Find It
Nop...the US has been presuring the rest of the world to fall in line with their copyright restrictions. Thank god they've failed :)
:)
As for me, I'm so damned happy about this: I love Callas, and the great jazz and blues bands/songs. They also make great 'film' music, very atmospheric/moody. Now I can put them under my homemade 3d movies totaly without fear of being asked uncomfortable questions about payment whenever or wherever I show them of.
And what to think of actual good filmmakers, who couldn't secure the rights to that piece they wanted to have under that certain scene in their movie...now they have a few more options. This is a good thing
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
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.
Excuse me. Was there ever an EXPENSIVE Elvis?
...because we all know the people who are huge into 50's music, seniors, are also massive pirators.
To make a pun demonstrates the highest understanding of a language
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.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
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.
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.
Find free books.
How do you think Disney makes all their money? The don't own classic greats such as "Pinochio", "Snow White" or "Beauty and the Beast" There are no copyrights on these works any longer and Disney made millions off them without paying one cent in royalties.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander mofo!
More people need to actually help things by proofreading at: Distributed Proofreading.
Distributed Proofreading actually contributes to the public domain. Show the politicians that it's important by giving them a thriving public domain that they will want to supply with new works.
I doubt using the wrong notes in a musical score would hold up in court. There's a provision that you cannot be held liable if there is a reasonable expectation that what you are doing is not in violation. Also, if they sue someone for that, they'd have to admit that's what they are doing. In that case, they could expect to a) lose a lot of customers, and b) have a lot of prior customers attempt to bring a class-action suit for fradulent misrepresentation of the product that;s for sale. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking.
But remasterings are a significant change, and would be protected by copyright.
What the man said was there are other viable alternatives to distributing our collective abundant wealth. Since it is well established that we do have more than enough food, medicine, and music to go around then it is hard to discredit the idea that the only reasons there are hungry people in the world are social issues. No, I'm not arguing for global communism, but are you arguing for letting food rot so that we can preserve the world's population of starving children?
For a detailed and extremely pragmatic (albeit idealistic and some might say naive) non-communist instruction manual on this subject please read R. Buckminster Fuller's book Critical Path. You never know, it just might open your eyes a bit and get you to think outside the capitalist/communist good/evil black/white world view.
Delivering militantly anti-commercial music to all two people who care!
Maybe the globalization of the free market has its good side after all? Make works PD in some (important) part of the world and then sell from there to the entire planet. Forget local unrealistic, monopolistic, consumer-unfriendly copywright extension laws. The free market will steamroller them all.
I never thought it'd come to this...
I'll leave the Elvis to others, but I can imagine doing really great things with remixes and resamples using the old Maria Calls, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk as freely available source material.
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
by a women who told him she had just read his latest book in the French translation and that she liked it a lot better than the English version.
Thurber replied, "Yes, it loses something in the original."
KFG
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
I see your point, and it's very valid, but there's a flaw in that argument. Let's use Mickey Mouse as an example.
The root of the problem is that when Walt created Mickey, and published his film, he essentially entered into a contract with the public. He agreed that he had a specific number of years from which to profit off of his creation (and he clearly took great advantage of this). Now, the Disney corporation (standing in for Walt himself) has not held up their end of the bargain.
The public agreed, in exchange for not using the intellectual property of Disney for some period of time, that they would gain the possesion of that property for the good of society at large. We held up our end of that bargain (sure some people didn't, but Disney was allowed to sick their lawyers on those folks, as well as use our legal infrastructure for that purpose), so where's the part that benefits us??
Yes, it's certainly in Eisner's interests to extend copyrights (including doing it retroactively). I do not fault him for endorsing such a policy. What I do have a problem with is the way he endorses it, and the fact that Congress doesn't understand or care about the public's side of things. The RIAA/MPAA have made quite a few shady deals (Hollings isn't called "senator Disney" for nothing) in order to get legislation to swing their way. This is really what's wrong with copyright law as it stands (and how it seems to be progressing).
Down with Saudi Arabia!!!
If Tower didn't overcharge for everything (compared their prices to, say, Wherehouse or even Borders), then they might not be in such bad shape. I for one avoid Tower wherever possible -- the extra $3 to $5 markup on DVDs make it pointless going there.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Only thanks to them can I pirate music and then consume it. Such strong, predatory verbs.
sic transit gloria mundi
While I find it hard to believe that musical scores can contain errors for this purpose (the effect on the ear is pretty noticeable) I know for a fact that road maps contain minor errors for copyright protection purposes so maybe it does happen in musical scores too.
I had always thought that road maps were made from some sort of known good data but when a friend of mine worked for a map making company I learned otherwise. The maps he drew were copies of maps from other sources (such as the competition). He would get several maps of an area and then copy the consistent portions. If he couldn't figure out what was consistent he would make something up that wouldn't greatly affect someone trying to follow the map.
My question is this: People are talking about being able to press Elvis recordings in the public domain now. However, doesn't this expiry only apply for _European_ copyright holders? Since Elvis took out the copyrights in the United States, presumably the 95-year rule still holds true, and not the one which the RIAA is so worried about?
The Welkin: Online Music Reviews
There are two types of royalities paid out, copyright for the songwriters and the mechaniacal royalty for the musicials and singers on a recording. As I know it copyright is for 25 years with 1 renewal allowed. So this is kind of a non story. Songs go public domain after 50 years. UNLESS like some late classical composers to make sure their families would be able to make money into the future would write arrangement of their key pieces. So at the end of the 50 years the family could copyright the arrangement and collect royalites on it. Assumeing the arrangement is used by anyone.
Now the mechinacal royalites on records like an Elvis recording itself, I don't know when those actually end. All it would mean is after 50 years you wouldn't have to pay songwriters royalies, but mechanical royalities may still need to be paid.
No copyright expires in Germany just after 50 years. If a work is copyrighted, these rights will expire 70 years after the author's death. (Substitute "droit d'auteur" for copyright if you want to).
What expires now, after 50 years, are the rights of the perfoming artists, and the those who made the records and distributed them.
This means that only a piece of music can be copied legally if, (a) the composer, songwriter etc. has been dead for at least 70 years, (b) the original release was 50 years ago, and (c) you make your copy from one of the origianl records. (With subsequent, say CD, releases, the record company gets new rights for 50 years.)
So I doubt that many mass-market compatible music recordings will suddenly become unencumbered by copyright law, at least here in Germany. I suspect the situation is similar in other European countries.
Elvis, Benny Goodman and Robert Johnson have finally achieved legal equivelence with Bach, Beethvon, Joplin and Sousa.
Which is where they belong.
I wonder how much money the music "industry" makes by "pirating" Bach and Joplin? It shouldn't be tolerated and someone should prosecute such blatently lawless acts.
Of course if anyone tried to do such the case would be thrown out on the motion of affirmative defense by virtue of such works having entered the public domain when their copyrights expired.
Well Duh! That's the *point* Sparky.
When a copyright expires it becomes public domain. If Elvis becomes public domain then recording him without permision is no different than recording Bach.
If this cuts into your bottom line, well, tough noogies Sparky.
How about coming up with something *new* of the same quality and selling us *that?*
Oh, sorry, I forgot. You're not very good at that, are you?
KFG
The thing is that the governments and europe have a much different sense of themselves than here. The government here, for the most part, hates itself. It seems to, at every turn, want to eliminate itself (or at least as much as possible without firing themselves or their buddies). So they look at the RIAA and think that they have the right to own what they've produced and that the government shouldn't interfere with that. This perspective is very distorted, but I digress.
In europe, the government sees itself having a more important and larger role in the lives of the people. Larger social wellfare programs, etc, are all part of that mentaility. This also means that they are less likely to bend to the will of large corporations at a moments whim. Furthermore, let's think about this, it is the RIAA. That second A is for America, and somehow I doubt most european bureaucrats will take kindly to the RIAA trying to dictate terms to them. If nothing else you can count on a general dislike of American hegemony to tilt the game out of the RIAA's favor.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Copyright protection lasts only 50 years in Europe compared to 95 years in the United States
Only 50 years?
"The import of those products would be an act of piracy," said Neil Turkewitz, the executive vice president international for the Recording Industry Association of America
Piracy? When it's perfectly legal, not to mention more than reasonable?
Mr. Turkewitz said, "We will try to get these products blocked," arguing that customs agents "have the authority to seize these European recordings even in the absence of an injunction brought by the copyright owners."
In other words, only abide by the rule of law as long as it's convenient and profitable?
I guess this just goes to show, yet again, who's really in charge.
And remember kids: Never trust a computer you can actually lift.
I thought they piloted pirate ships.
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!!!!
Thanks! Sometimes I think the best solution really would be for spooky monoliths to come down and say "STFU about copyright extension already, before we decide your species is too stupid to live," right before they detonate Jupiter for great justice, or whatever.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
IIRC the WTO has the legal mandate to force countries to change their laws in respect of barriers to trade.
A European record label which sells PD Music in Europe might want to expand its trade to the USA, where due to to extended copyrights it would be faced with an effective barrier to trade.
This company can through its national government file a complaint with the WTO, and the artificial barrier can be ordered to be removed and vast damages paid to the company for loss of potential earnings, also huge daily fines can be laid against the government in question until the laws are changed to match the European laws. IIRC the WTO allows for protective tarriffs to protect from and prepare industries for severe change to their marketplaces, IIRC these tarriffs can last a maximum of 3 years...
Economic Left/Right: -0.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.69
Ten bucks says copyright in the EU will be extended in the next 18 months or so...
Taken!
In order for this to be implemented equally all over the EU it needs to be in a directive. Creating an EU directive is a long and winding process. I don't think such a directive would catch us off guard (again), so it would probably fail.
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
What annoys me more is why people think of the USSR whenever communism is mentioned. The cold-war propaganda has imbred into us "communism BADDDD", when the problem there really was a totalitairian government. The USSR is not a pristine example of communism, and as long as we associate the two, it makes it impossible for any political change away from the corrupt and anti-citizen, pro-multinational shit hole most of the world suffers under, with the wonderful added delusion of democracy.
Spider Robinson wrote a short story, called Melancholy Elephants that has an interesting take on the copyright issue. Do artists REALLY need a 95-year copyright? I can understand copyright for the life of the author, and possibly his family, but beyond that, it's a little ridiculous. I recommend reading the story .. Very good insight..
-- Karma is for people who think they matter.
Are you kidding? Copyright isn't there to reward artists, though that is becoming a very common misconception. It's there to entice artists to create works. It should only be long enough to do that. Obviously Steamboat Willy was already created.... lengthening the copyright to 95 years doesn't make more works for the public domain, it creates fewer because the companies can keep milking the same stories and characters.
And your point about enjoying the copyright during the artist's lifetime plus some time for their decendents has already been enacted. Current copyrights are for the lifetime of the last surviving author plus 70 years. Why not extend it to the lifetime of the last remaining author or child of the author plus 200 years? Wouldn't that be even better?
Where's the logic?
From the Yahoo article:
Always the same lame BS. If it is so unprofitable to release music then why don't they go sell cigarettes in 3rd world countries?
Please stop whining and act professional.
No need for P2P. It's perfectly legal to put this stuff up on Web sites in Europe. Of course, the RIAA will try to make US ISPs block access to these sites, but this will give the US telecommunications industry more incentive to oppose the RIAA's agenda.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
"Already reeling from a stagnant economy and the illegal but widespread downloading of copyrighted music from the Internet..."
Does that mean we are winning?
J.
The Copyright on the copy has a 50 year life?
So if, say, the recording company makes a copy of a 50 year old vinyl record and pays the royalty to be legit, their copy can not be legally copied for 50 years?
Got reference?
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
"Why does everyone assume that the only alternative to capitalism is communism? (Why does everyone assume that because I'm not a Republican I'm a Democrat?)"
Because people still think politically [not to mention in other areas] in a dualistic sense.
Want an alternate model? Try the Political Compass
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
He already was flipping hamburgers at the Silver Diner on Franconia Road next to Springfield Mall; but before I could tell anybody, he quit and moved on somewhere.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
10 yrs ago real life hassling other countries' products, so-called "pirate copies," through customs. Importation for resale and personal copies are quite diferent. I'm a self employed engineer that reads broadly. I travel to Asia for family/business reasons. Over a month or two I picked up 80 classic technical reprints from other fields, mostly 1950-1960s. No way are they worth $60-$200 each to me or market value (outdated, but useful for a neophyte that likes to be broadly fluent). Customs agent: looks like confiscatable books not allowed to be imported. Me: I'm not importing them for resale, they're my personal books (with a laser stare) legally printed, bought, used overseas, and returning with me just like I'm moving from overseas. Customs agent: (noises) going to have to bond them or dump them. Me: I will want a complete listing, title and author for bonding (legal storage limbo). (Think actual writing effort, poor time efficiency, BAD will and prejudicial complaints here) Customs: Let me check with my supervisor. 5 mins later: "You're allowed one personal copy of each" (Duh! IANAL either)
The US bitches about China and other nations about censorship all the time.
Will the US take steps to censor European websites? (Hey! Be like China and censor websites that conflict with the -ISM your country worships even if the content of those websites is perfectly legal within those other countries!)
Heck, if it's legal to import this music, then it's got to be legal to download it...Right? If you can sell records and sell downloadable music, how is downloading any different than making some copies and shipping them here?
I wonder if this also means that all those old Disney movies are no longer under copyright.
It also leads to an interesting question about a possible long term strategy. The **AA's could assert that it's illegal to link to sites legally loaded with content if the content is under copyright anywhere. They could then lobby for perpetual copyright in some other country and still effectively keep control over the Internet distribution of content forever...
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
A new performance and recording of an old song would be protected by copyright. But a new digital remastering of a public domain recording isn't a new work any more than transforming a .wav to .mp3 makes it a new work.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
Here's an idea. Find a business model that actually works. Wha? Yeah! Huh? Uhuh! Eh? Mmhmm!
If the copyrights expire on Elvis, then what impetus is there for Elvis to create more works if he know he can only profit from them for 50 years?
Its the beginning of the end!
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
The record companies are going too far. Soon it will be illegal to fart because it sounds musical to someone at the RIAA. Fuck em. Hmmm... maybe I should put the sounds of humans farting on CD as prior art. And copyright it, of course.
today is spelling optional day.
Someone has seriously been neglecting their lobbying duties.
Whoever is watching over the cash mill at the USPTO has been sleeping and not yet realized they could/should play these same shenanigans with patents. How about life of the inventor + 70 years, or more?
Imagine the value of IP that is being placed into the public domain every day after 20 years expire! Now there's some lobbying money that can be put to good use!
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
WOLF FM just launched an oldies radio station on January 1 called Howlin Oldies.
Coincidence?
This is how this should work 1. A work is copywrited for the life of the author, and no longer. 2. A work is considered to be part of the public domain (IE, can be shared through whatever means available, not for profit) if the author is not actively distributing the work, or an authorized distributor of the work ceases to distribute said work (As in out of print CDs, movies... Basically, if I can't go to the store and buy it, I should be able to get it through whatever public domain channel of my choice without having to fear being chased after.) These two simple things would basically turn the market on its ear... All kinds of things would be going public domain within reasonably short periods of time because there would just be too much content to distribute.. Publishers and record companies can not afford to continue to distribute every single release that has ever been made, nor can all of these fit into. Also, its good for the authors of these works to have things go into the public domain during their lifetimes under these set of rules as it can cause interest to surge to the point that a distributor that is doing their homework would see that something is becoming popular again, negotiate distribution rights with the author, and once again have the work put out in its whole, possibly in a higher definition media, or with new artwork, etc. After the authors death, then simple supply and demand can drive distribution.. You can just get the public domain kazaa version, or you can pick up a store copy from the distributor of your choice if its a popular item, being that the popularity of the item drives the distributors into maintaining the quality of the release. This would also probably lead to a boom in restoring older works that have deteriorated or have been edited or otherwise abridged. oh well enough babbling...
It's actually life + 70 years, which is a pretty long time
Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't the law that defines the copyright term as a function of the life of the author discriminatory?
Here's my logic:
Person A is 10 years old, and is a prodigy. There's no history of major disease (like cancer) in his family, and everybody in his family lives for an average of 100 years - for the sake of argument, he lives until he's 100. He writes his first symphony at the age of 10 years, and (as he lives to be 100 years old) his copyright lasts 160 years (100 - 10 + 70)
Person B is 46 years old, but has a family history of cancer and diabetes. She writes her first symphony at 46, lives to 50, and so her copyright only lasts 110 years.
So if all people are equal under the law, why does Person A get 160 years of protection, but the same law grants Person B only 2/3rds the same amount?
It's quite clear that the current copyright law discriminates against the elderly, as well as terminally ill, and people who have a genetic predisposition to cancer or other life-shortening diseases.
I'm not an American, so can someone tell me if there are laws against discrimination?
Actually, Walt Disney would argue that Mickey Mouse is a trademark, so no, not anyone could use Mickey Mouse to market their product.
Several years ago, I bought a VHS tape with "Bugs Bunny" and the likeness of Bugs on the front and language to the effect of "This videotape contains public domain audiovisual works and is not endorsed by Warner Communications" on the back. Less than a week ago, I saw several similar tapes for sale at my local Walgreens store. If what you're saying is true, that trademark law gives Disney a monopoly on the early Mickey Mouse cartoons even after their copyrights have expired, then I'd expect Time Warner to have prevailed in legal action against these sellers of "Bugs Bunny" tapes years ago.
Or you could just follow the example of the maintainers of the GPL version of Star Control 2, who call their product "The Ur-Quan Masters" instead of "Star Control 2".
Will I retire or break 10K?
Does anybody know what copyright period is in Canana?
Yes, Life plus 50.
Sure, his family may rely on the royalties (however minor those are), which is why I said perhaps his immediate family.
Here's an idea..
How about his family get a damn job, or create something of their own?
Disclaimer:
My mother is a writer. I am an artist (in fact, I did the cover of her most recent book.)
A term is the best way of handling copyright. None of this "life plus" crap.
It is the editors job to write wrong notes so it may not be copied although the composer died more than 100 years ago.
I don't know about European copyright, but according to the United States Copyright Office, publishing a spell-checked edition of a novel does not create a sufficiently original work of authorship worthy of its own copyright. Likewise, neither would inserting deliberate errors as a sort of "watermark".
Will I retire or break 10K?
I mean, it's never really been legal to take your record player out on the street and play tunes for everyone to hear.
Tell that to the man who drives down the street everyday blaring Eminem out of his car.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I cannot think of any communist state that did not have a totalitarian government. In fact, no communist state stands today that is not a totalitarian shithole, China included. How many failed, corrupt communist states will it take before "pure/pristine communism" people like you realize that the two keep ending up together because communism naturally breeds totalitarianism?
Whenever your government mandate is to put tons of power in the hands of the few people running the government, that government eventually becomes corrupt. The chances of getting decades and centuries of consecutively benevolent leaders that can handle tons of power without being corrupt are very slim, so capitalist democracies like the United States and many European countries have made sure that the power in the government is spread very thinly and that as much of it as possible is in the hands of the people.
Now we find that European law (in general) provides shorter terms than were in force before the CTEA? Maybe my memory is fauly here - perhaps somebody can correct.
For a detailed and extremely pragmatic (albeit idealistic and some might say naive) non-communist instruction manual on this subject please read R. Buckminster Fuller's book Critical Path. You never know, it just might open your eyes a bit and get you to think outside the capitalist/communist good/evil black/white world view.
For a detailed and extremely pragmatic (albeit idealistic and some might say naive) non-communist instruction manual on how to take a fucking joke, please turn on Comedy Central or just go out and get yourself a standup CD. The Anonymous Coward post above yours was making a joke, not seriously accusing someone of communism. That's why it says "(Score:3, Funny)".
The cool thing about jazz is that there's a certain repertoire, and musicians who don't know each other can get together, and somone can say, "Let's play Stella by Starlight," and everybody knows it and can create new music out of the melody and chord changes they know. The problem is that if they record a performance of Stella by Starlight, they can't distribute it freely, because it's copyright encumbered.
Find free books.
Copyright beyond the author's death gives protection to an author's dependants if he dies suddenly.
So did the copyright for a fixed period of 28 years that the 1790 act provided. So do modern-day patents, which last 20 years after filing.
Copyright generally lasts for the life of the author because author's prefer to retain control over their works.
Then why don't patents last life-plus as well?
Whether or not [a life-plus copyright term] actually encourages the production of creative work is in doubt.
If it's in doubt, it shouldn't be in law.
I favor much shorter periods for corporate owned copyrights
Pretty much every Berne member other than the United States provides this already, by taking the "life" of a corporation as 0 years instead of USA 25 years in the formula to determine the copyright term.
Corporations are structured much better to reap economic benefits from the work.
So if an author wants to use the structure of a corporation to reap the reward that drives the progress of science and useful arts, then let an author provide a short-term exclusive license to a corporation.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Natasha: Vhat Are you doink Dahling?
Boris: Burning coppies of that Capitalist pig Elvis' first album. Ve vill sell them by bajillions and buy a nuke from Korea for Fearless Leader's Birthday.
Rocky: Stop right there Badinov! Jack Valenti sent us to put the kibosh on your illegal operation.
Bullwinkle: Hey Rocky, watch me pull a customs agent out of my hat!
Boris: Foiled again!
Natasha: Don't worry poopsie, I hear Saddam Husein has some Anthrax he vill sell cheap. That vill make good gift for Fearless Leader's birthday.
Bullwinkle: Kinda makes you wonder if we're going after the wrong people for the wrong reasons don't it?
Customs Agent: (Snapping on latex glove) I'm affraid we're going to have to search you two to make sure there isn't any contraband coming into the country.
Rocky: Not again!
What if it is just turtles all the way down?
He's really a pathetic excuse for a human being
Bad troll. But you bring up a point:
Copying or using another's work does not foster creativity.
In some cases, it does. Had Victor Hugo's Les Misérables not fallen into the public domain, we probably wouldn't have a stage adaptation today.
And in some fields, inadvertent copying is unavoidable, leading to bad decisions such as the "Yes! We have no bananas!" case, where the publisher of Handel's Messiah successfully sued the songwriter of "Bananas" for copying a mere four notes from "Hallelujah Chorus".
using common themes from literature
But where does "reusing common themes" become "copying"? Where is the line between "idea" and "expression"?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I think the reason that Disney is really going into decline is that they lack a substantial base of public domain material to create new works from - look at any recent movie, like Lilo and Stitch or Dinosaur. These are not based on classics, and as a result lack what little depth that older works (like Beauty and the Beast or Pooh material) had. Disney was always at its best interpreting classic works for animation, and they have tapped the mine - then through copyright extension blasted shut the mine so NO-ONE (including themselves!) can get anything else out again.
To me it's pretty ironic that Disney has been the primary agent of its own (eventual) destruction. I'm just pissed off the whole copyright fiasco will take so much of my lifetime to work itself out, so I will miss some of the amazing creative works that will naturally arise after much material is freed to be used by artists of all media...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
How do you think Disney makes all their money? The don't own classic greats such as "Pinochio"
Disney owns Walt Disney's Pinocchio (1940). Every other direct[1] film adaptation of the novel The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi (read an English translation here) has failed at the box office because the differences from the familiar Disney version are too jarring. Just look at how bad Disney's Pinocchio 2.0 (2002) is doing, even though it is more faithful to the novel, chapter by chapter, than any previous feature film adaptation of the novel. The obvious conclusion is that Disney has co-opted the common knowledge of Pinocchio so as to create a false impression in the average American's mind that "if it's not Walt Disney's Pinocchio (1940), it's not the real Pinocchio."
[1] I don't consider Short Circuit or A.I. a direct adaptation.
Will I retire or break 10K?
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.
Capitalism is ALLOWING the markets to function on their own.
Intellectual property rights are the government getting involved in things they probably shouldn't, and then allowing PARTICULAR capitalists to influence said government intervention. It's not EVERY company that wants copyright extended, just those that happen to pay enough money to the government to make it so.
You want another viable economic model? Get the damn government to stop protecting corporations, and allow the market to determine who makes money.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Of course, there would be even more suffering and more death if the products where not invented, which is mostly what would happen if drug companies couldn't make money off of them>
You might see some work being done at universities and such, but not nearly at the same level.
Of course, there are also other possible revinue streams, such as the government paying a bounty and such.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
1.) Overcharge for the service of being a useless middleman.
2.) Lobby congress to pass useless fascist laws
3.) ??????
4.) People buy more CDs
5.) PROFIT!!!!!
Repeal the DMCA!
The cold war put an end to that. A capitalist environment fares much better in an arms race, as the arms race benefits the economy, as opposed to draining it. The cold war broke the USSRs back, they simply couldn't keep up with all the missiles everyone else was pointing at them.
The lack of proper elections in all the main communist states does lead to the problems you describe. However, communism, like capitalism is an economic system. Democracy and communism have no reason why they cannot exist. Just as there are many examples of capitalist dictatorships in the world.
"pure/pristine communism" people like you realize that the two keep ending up together because communism naturally breeds totalitarianism?
No they don't! That's just bad logic. Just because there have been a few large scale examples of that happening, it doesn't mean that one is causation of the other.
I liked the people like me part! Who are you grouping together with me? The commies? Well, sorry, I'm not one. I'm just a bit more prepared to examine other ideas than the ones I am fed during my upbringing, i.e. breaking from the "party line". Sorry for being an individual!
capitalist democracies like the United States and many European countries have made sure that the power in the government is spread very thinly and that as much of it as possible is in the hands of the people.
That is so self-deluded, I don't know where to begin! The leader of one of these countries has a lot of power. They can start mini-wars, and now hi-tech assassinations are all the rage.
The two party system is a complete mockery if the word "democracy" and the will of the people can be summed up as the 5-yearly choice between the advertising campaigns and media spin of two large corporate-backed power groups. The winner of this will then spend the next term making life easy for their campaign contributiors (legitimised bribery) and not listening to the will of the people. Members of the political party have to toe the party line on certain issues, in order to fit-in. You can't divide every issue into two choices and expect those choices to be split across the parties in a way that everyone is happy with. A vote for a third party is generally a waste of time, and 9 times out of 10, people vote for the opposing canditate of someone they don't like. Often for silly reasons, such as their haircut, looks, or how their parents voted.
Hardly a great advertisment for the western way. Capitalism seems to work to a point, but the rich are just getting far too rich, and the poor are getting far to poor at the moment for me to agree with you that it "works".
I don't know about the remastering thing, but they wouldn't be able to legally reproduce the entire album, as there's one song who's initial release was in the late 90s, and the copyright on it is probably dated from when it was found.
Also there were several songs on there from the 60s.
Dark Nexus
"Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."
Sound fair? It's how intellectual "property", if it really were property, would have to work. Good thing it's not. The idea of intellectual "property" just doesn't jive, for a variety of reasons:
- The "creation" involved is not creation ex nihilo; all authors and composers draw on previous work for inspiration and source material. Granting an exclusive property right to the last one to contribute to what is essentially historically a group effort is akin to only giving the beer to the last guy who helped lift; it makes the system morally unjust.
- If copyright were a property right it would be unable to expire; as you pointed out, owning something now means you'll own it 96 years from now. Yet this would cause copyright to quickly be in violation of many property-rights theories. For example, John Locke says that an appropriation of property to oneself is just if and only if one leaves "enough and as good for others". But if copyright is a property right and thus perpetual, we would very quickly run out of things left for others; as previously mentioned, "creation" of property in this sense involves drawing upon the work of others, and to do so would be illegal. There might be the occasional truly new idea, but copyright would fast reach a point where we were not leaving "enough and as good".
- The notion of copyright as property grants an exclusive property right in something which is non-exclusive. In the case of physical property, the right makes sense because physical items can generally only be possessed by one person at a time and the stability of society demands that some form of ownership be instituted in order to prevent constant strife over such possession; this principle is the basis of several major theories of property (e.g., Thomas Hobbes' and David Hume's). However, with something which can be possessed non-exclusively, applying such a rule makes little sense; if all can enjoy and benefit from possession of a thing simltaneously with no strife and no harm, would it not be an evil to deny such enjoyment and possession?
And that's just the tip of the iceberg; I've been researching the philosophy of copyright for a damned long time and while there are certainly some fuzzy areas, I can sy with absolute certainty that copyright cannot be "property" in the sense in which you have used the term.Hrm. That thing rated me as:
:-)
Economic Left/Right: -1.12
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -3.23
Almost bang in line with Charles Kennedy! Ha! I think he's a moron. It's wrong, and I am not a left-winger
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Now "bootleg" labels can legitimately print ...
Bootleggers don't legitimately print anything.
Legitimate companies can legitimately produce these records in Europe. Nothing wrong, illegal, shady etc about that. Calling these companies "bootleggers" seems libelous to me.
Of course, it is possible that bootleggers will then smuggle the products from the jurisdictions where they are legally produced and may be legally sold, into jurisdictions where they may not legitimately be sold.
That is, if Sony Europe sells a particular CD for a value of $1 in San Marino, they cannot prevent its importation into the US even if it undercuts Sony America's price of $20, BECAUSE THEY ALREADY SOLD IT.
Unfortunately, we have dumb laws in Europe which mean that, if Levi's sell jeans for $10 in the USA, they CAN prevent their importation into Europe because it undercuts their official price of $200 (or whatever), using Trademark laws of all things.
But even that is not as evil as the European laws which mean that all New Zealand Cheese (apart from Cheddar) and Dessert Wines are banned for being too good (i.e. they would outcompete local brands). Pah!
What is the copyright laws applicanle in the UK ?
:
Copyright Act 1988 states the following
Duration of copyright in sound recordings and films.
13.--(1) Copyright in a sound recording or film expires--
(a) at the end of the period of 50 years from the end of the calendar year in which it is made, or
(b) if it is released before the end of that period, 50 years from the end of the calendar year in which it is released.
(2) A sound recording or film is "released" when--
(a) it is first published, broadcast or included in a cable programme service, or
(b) in the case of a film or film sound-track, the film is first shown in public;
but in determining whether a work has been released no account shall be taken of any unauthorised act.
source
or taken from the patent office
Copyright in a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work (including a photograph) lasts until 70 years after the death of the author. The duration of copyright in a film is 70 years after the death of the last to survive of the principal director, the authors of the screenplay and dialogue, and the composer of any music specially created for the film. Sound recordings, broadcasts and cable programmes are protected for 50 years, and published editions are protected for 25 years.
Source
So which is it ?
Why cant legislators just make up their minds and give us a definitive answer ?
You could justify the two branches (life and number of years) of the term of a copyright as follows: (i) the "life of author" branch is to prevent a person's creativity, heart & soul, etc. from being exploited by others without his consent while he is alive (call this a "moral right")
As far as I know, moral rights are not addressed by US copyright law. They are paritally addressed in Canada, and in some (most? all?) European countries. Moral rights cannot be "assigned" to another person, so they die when the author dies.
There are interesting issues relating to the interaction of copyright lapse and continuing derviative products. For instance, in the case of Dune, upon a theoretical 20-year copyright expiration in 1985, (i) publishers would have been free to publish the original Dune without royalties to Frank Herbert, etc., and (ii) authors and publishers would have been free to publish their own derivative works using characters from the original Dune
Why is this an issue?
This is the exact purpose of copyright law - to enrich our culture by having a continually growing base of works in the public domain.
You think Disney created Snow White? Or Cinderella?
No, he made embellishments to these stories. He's made his money, now it's time to give back, so that our culture can expand.
Remember I said my mother was a writer? She's 67 now. Assuming nothing changes in WRT copyright terms, I (and the rest of my brothers and sisters) will die before the copyright expires.
To me, that's just plain wrong.
You mean Lisa Marie, right? Guess she'll have to go out and marry another celebrity, or bump up the price of admission at Graceland. The poor girl has such a hard life, she is just trying to reap the benefits of all her hard work.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Democracy and communism have no reason why they cannot [co-]exist.
Interesting question--I can think of an argument and a counter-argument, both pretty weak. Do you have stronger arguments?
Argument: Sweden (strong because democracy, weak because socialism, not communism.)
Counter-argument: deToqueville's analysis of the economy of a democracy in Democracy in America (see Chapter XIII). Basically, he argues that a principal cause of instability in a democracy is that the citizens find they can vote themselves money. In effect, the majority can ride herd, economically, on the minority (ie. in the US, 50% of the population pays 98% of the taxes.) The incentive to do this is so great that it may prevent a communistic society from forming, unless the society were much more uniformly moral (the morality here being a communist one--everyone works, everyone gains) than a society could be.
My thought experiment goes like this: (1) a democratic communism exists; (2) a small minority learns how to become more comfortable than the rest, somehow; (3) the majority finds that they can do less work and live just as well if they allow the minority to make more and take some of it for themselves; (4) the majority votes to do so, explicitly allowing stratification of earnings pre-tax and some incentive to the higher-earning minority to incent them to continue to do so; (5) stratification and taxation continues until just less than half the voters pay all the taxes.
Note that this is a problem of democracy, not communism or capitalism. I would conclude that pure communism or pure capitalism requires some sort of minority rule.
Milo
And, more to the point, the anime companies do tend to use the fansub community as an indicator of what properties they should bring to North America next.
That having been said, copyright does work differently in Japan; you can do alot more in terms of 'fan' derived work, so long as it's not commerical.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Automatically disabling itself when the copyright expires
Automatically updating itself when the copyright term changes
Any DRM system that can't do those things can't be required by law if its purpose is to support copyright, since it should support the rights of BOTH creators and the public.
Of course, all the above assumes logic and fair play will be considered. As a substitute for those, the legal system uses due process.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Right you are! I've read a few of Neil Postman's books, and the "Gutenberg would have been horrified" bit came to mind, so I Googled and found that quote.
The clock on today's copyright doesn't even start ticking until he's bucked the kicket. Life of the author plus 70 years, no?
Which means that if Mozart were born today and was destined to be particularly long-lived, the stuff he composes at age 5 wouldn't fall into the public domain until the last years of the 22nd century. I cannot in my wild hallucinations comprehend how anyone can consider this state of affairs to be necessary and, against all logic, insufficient.
Dyolf Knip
Of course, this train of thought is logical and reasonable, so I expect it will have no effect on lawyers, judges, and politicians.
Dyolf Knip
To prevent that situation you'd need to ensure that a small minority doesn't get total control, and there are rules to prevent manipulation of the system. You'd also need a free and independent press to cover the issues to the public fairly and without bias. Ain't ever going to happen in todays world, to many have a vested interest in the status quo.
You make some interesting points...
No they don't! That's just bad logic. Just because there have been a few large scale examples of that happening, it doesn't mean that one is causation of the other.
That's a distortion of the facts. There haven't just been "a few large scale examples of that happening". The reality, as I already pointed out, was that there was no example of the opposite happening. Rather than pointing out a few small examples of communist dictatorships, I said that I could not think of one that DID NOT have a totalitarian government. You furnished no example to refute that.
I liked the people like me part! Who are you grouping together with me? The commies? Well, sorry, I'm not one. I'm just a bit more prepared to examine other ideas than the ones I am fed during my upbringing, i.e. breaking from the "party line". Sorry for being an individual!
Again, a distortion. What is more likely, that by "you people" I meant "godless communists" or "people making the same exact argument that you were"? You assume that the other side is insulting you in your responses because you wish that I had just given you the old "oh, fuck you, you dirty commie" response, presumably because you would've handled that better and been more equipped to refute it.
A vote for a third party is generally a waste of time, and 9 times out of 10, people vote for the opposing canditate of someone they don't like.
Right there, you refute your own argument. People can vote for a third party. In fact, in most of the ballots I've seen, there are at least five people from five parties for each seat. That's democracy and the fact that the people don't want to vote for a third party does not change that. They have a choice and just because they keep sticking with what they've got doesn't mean that that's their only choice.
Often for silly reasons, such as their haircut, looks, or how their parents voted.
Again, you assume that other people are stupid because it helps your argument. Can you furnish any example of someone coming out an ballot booth and telling a journalist or pollster "I voted for him because I like his haircut" or "That's what daddy told me"? Or do you just assume that everyone that doesn't agree with you is "diluted"?
Hardly a great advertisment for the western way. Capitalism seems to work to a point, but the rich are just getting far too rich, and the poor are getting far to poor at the moment for me to agree with you that it "works".
If the rich are just getting richer and the poor are getting so much poorer, then I'd think that you would have a better example of that than the same quote that communists have been using throughout the last century. You make very sensationalist statements without backing them up.
Not that it isn't interesting to think about, but I believe the problems with your thought experiment (if I understand it correctly) are that you are assuming that people are motivated entirely by greed and have no concept of the long-term. If the people in general were indeed like that it might well be a good idea to discard democracy and aim for some sort of benevolent dictatorship as an ideal.
If the rich are just getting richer and the poor are getting so much poorer,
Are you denying that that is not the essential basis of capitalism, both in theory and in practice?
What strikes me, in the current debate over Bush's proposed tax cuts, is that the media seems to be willfully ignoring the fact that only the richer half of the country pays taxes. When they say that Bush's tax cuts favor the rich, it's a sort of tautology: only the 'rich' (meaning those wealthier than average) pay taxes. The argument should be how much money to take from the rich and give to the poor (in the form of increased government services), not whether or not the rich are paying their 'fair share.' I think that people aren't willing to face up to what you call greed in this country: the majority of people here demand a welfare state that they can not actually afford.
Now, I am not willing to call this immoral, and I believe it is the same situation as in my thought experiment--people giving up certain principles (the Jeffersonian principles of owning the fruits of your labor and minimal government that were moral mainstays until, well probably until the 1930s) in exchange for money or services. I hesitate to call it greed, although it is tempting as I contemplate my W-2, since it has always been presented to me as a different set of principles (ie. helping those less fortunate.) I believe that in the world of my thought experiment, the same process would take place: the hard-line communists would be outvoted by those who are willing to switch principles to those of capitalism, partly because they don't believe strongly in either and partly because under the bastardized system their lives, as well as their neighbors', parents' and childrens', are better.
Milo
in the US, 50% of the population pays 98% of the taxes.
I've heard this before, but it seems to have stayed oddly unchanging since I heard it first, which I think was several years ago. Do you have a source? Also, is it 50% of the absolute population or 50% of the working population, or 50% of the eligible working population? If it's the first then saying that only the wealthier than the mean pay taxes is rather misleading.
Caught me. My source is the WSJ, sometime in the last two months. But, like you, I have heard various numbers and various metrics--generally depending on the affiliation of the quoted congressperson. But if said congresspeople don't have to footnote references, why do I? :-)
:-). Note that all these numbers are for individual returns (ie. not corporate, partnerships, etc.) Anyway, my whole argument might be mooted by my definition of rich as more adjusted gross income than average: clearly wealth has a fixed asset component, not just a cash flow component. Also, the argument is mightily skewed by including just income tax and not sales tax, property tax, tariffs and all the other governmental fees. Which way it is skewed is anybody's guess. My wish would be to see an overall comparison of who pays for our government and who benefits. At least then we could have a real argument about our priorities.
Looking, quickly, at the tax stats at the IRS site I can't find the link between people and taxes owed. The best I can do is find that tax returns with more than $100,000 in adjusted gross income account for 48.4% of taxable income and 61.5% of income tax after credits. This is for 1999, the latest year readily available. I understand that this is not the same thing as people, but it is directionally correct. I believe the average household income is below $100,000 (somewhere in the $60k range?)
I believe the numbers I quoted in my prior post were 50% of the absolute population, which is the most aggressive way to count (which is to be expected of the WSJ.) But, aside from minors, who can't vote, this supports my point (also note that the rich half have children too--whether thay have more or fewer than the poor half is difficult to say, especially since the poor half includes many people just starting in the work force who may not have children yet while the rich half is overrepresented by older people who will have had the children they are going to have.)
There was a quote in the NYT in the past couple of weeks from a Democrat who quoted number of taxpayers versus most of the tax paid and it was much more than 50%, which makes sense since there were 127 million returns filed in a nation of 281 million people.
Sorry for the scattered response, I wish I was more conversant with the actual stats, but it's hard to fit that into my job description
Milo
I wasn't saying that a "moral right" concept as such exists in the U.S. as it does in Europe (it was probably a bad idea on my part to use a term that has a specific meaning in another legal system), but that the "life of author" branch of the copyright term owes its origin to "moral" concepts as much as to economic incentive ones.
h ju 43666.000/hju43666_0.htm
I think the problem boils down to US competitiveness with Europe. Europe recognizes Moral rights (which last the author's lifetime), and the Lobbyists display to US lawmakers and say "See - Europe extends copyright to the life of the author - we're missing out!".. but they neglect to point out that it's a moral right, not an economic right.. and since the US doesn't recognize moral right, they simply extended the economic right "to compensate".
I would like to try to check out the arguments made in favor of copyright extensions in any Congressional hearings on the subject -- just to see if there are any half-way legitimate arguments I am missing. (Does anyone have any links?)
Try this one; it's from the Sonny Bono hearings.
http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/judiciary/
The main thrust of the arguments seems to be "We need to be better than Europe!"
Vincent Vecera (a policial science student) posted an (admittedly one-sided) interpretation of these hearings (and others) here (it's in PDF format though.)