Slashdot Mirror
'That's All Right' Soon To Enter UK Public Domain
jwlidtnet writes "Reuters is reporting that Elvis's "That's All Right"--currently an unlikely hit in Great Britain--is soon to enter the public domain in that country, followed by other milestones of popular music as Britain's fifty-year protection period comes to an end. Naturally, rights owners are outraged, regarding it as a "wakeup call" for Britain to adopt something similar to the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, to end this "discrepancy between the United States and the EU." Copyright law uniformity has of course been a sore issue in recent years, with the exportation of "DMCA-alike" legislation raising the ire of many. Uniformity on an issue this divisive might be difficult to achieve politically."
Perhaps they could encourage the US to conform to more sane standards that benefit the people instead of the big corporations who want to milk a dead man's music for all the profit they can get out of it.
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
If this recording enters the public domain, what incentive will Elvis have to produce new music?
Okay I wanna know if there is ANY possible justification for this except PURE
GREED. And I don't mean the good kind of greed that drives competition,
innovation, and creation of new music.
Elvis is dead. He doesn't need the money. His estate run by spongers sure
doesn't need it. When he wrote the song, in fact, copyright law was less
draconian than it is now. So he certainly wasn't factoring in a copyright
extensions when he wrote the song "Hey, I wonder if I should write a song
today. Well, if they don't extend copyright in 2005, I won't, I have better
things to do."
Shouldn't copyright be used to *encourage new music*?? This is just sick. I
wish they would just STOP extending copyright. I wish the governments around
the world would just say, OKAY YOU'VE HAD ENOUGH.
I wish they would view copyright as an *exchange* between the copyright holder
and the public, and not just some formality that the record labels have to go
through every few years to keep extending it.
Can you think of any other situation where you can just go up to the
government and say, hey, I'd like to extract money from society for another 20
years?
I'm dead, i'm all dried up, awhahuh..... ohhhhhhh oohhhhhhhh yea!
time to move to britan and start recording elvis remakes i say
And Elvis and the record companies knew it 50 years ago, when they were making the music in the first place.
Yay!
Now I can make that Elvis cover I've always wanted to do!
Or maybe not.
If copyright law is changed so that it extends some number of years after the death of the artists, rather than from the date of release of the recording, will we see the likes of 2 year old "Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily", "Fifi Trixibelle" and "Moon Unit" banging a drum on the backing track to prolong copyright as much as possible?
>> Uniformity on an issue this divisive might be difficult to achieve politically.
Specially since Blair has been accused of letting Dubya have his way on one to many an issue.
Given that this is mostly a commercial issue (national or global security is hardly at stake), I have a feeling Blair and the Labour party will politely ask the Americans to go shove it where the sun don't shine and score with the masses on both sides of the pond.
..in japan.
About the alleged "discrepancy between the United States and the EU." - Many (most?) European countries have life plus 70. I was surprised to find that Great Britain does not.
IAAAL - I am actually a lawyer
If individual artists controlled their own music, we wouldn't have anyone lobbying for insane copyright terms, because individuals eventually die, so there's no one to keep lobbying for more and more extensions. The problem with corporations is that they're immortal, so there's no end to the insanity. Believe me, if they get the term extended to 95 years, the Slashdot headline in July 2049 will be about how the Elvis recordings are about to enter the public domain, and the music industry is lobbying the government to extend the term to 150 years so they can keep making money. Every time I read about the RIAA or IFPI, I'm reminded that there are ETLAs far more annoying than GNAA.
Hear recorded Slashdot headlines on your phone! New service beta testing. Just call (248) 434-5508
Am I the only one who gets the image of an eight-year old screaming "Giv me that it's mine!!".
Anyone remember A Little Less Conversation Elvis vs JXL? it reached Number One in 20 countries, including the USA.
This song becoming a hit is more likely than one might imagine.
As for "rights owners" we need to say who this phrase really means: The American monopoly music companies.
They have already said that they will try and block the importation of products containing legally produced public domain works; it would be the most delicious of situations if this song did become a huge smash after it entered the public domain in the UK, and the RIAA tried to block its importation.
One thing is for certain; as more and more works enter the public domain here in the UK, the likelyhood of a hit coming from one of these works increases. This confrontation is going to happen.
ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
...is the tone of the article - it doens't even consider that original idea that copyright might be about balance, a privilege accorded with the intent of fostering creation. Rather, it is simply accepted that the natural expiration of these copyrights, which the holders knew would happen, is somehow causing a property loss to the current holders.
Imagine if you obtained a 50 year lease, and then at the end of those 50 years, the owner wanted the property back. Would you moan to the government about extending your term unilaterally, with no other compensation to the actual owner?
But Elvis is alive! I just saw him leaving the building!
I could use another 20+ years for this attrocity to wait.
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i was thinking the same thing. when copyright laws where first invented corporations where not around. copyright was created for the benefit of the writer of a text so that noone else could take that text and print it without paying the writer. it had a buildt in timeout tho so that you didnt grant a virtual monopoly for life. the problems i guess realy started when corporations started getting the same rights as individuals (from what i have read at the start corporations had very limited rights) and even more so when labels starting to request that the group or individiual signed over his or her rights to the song. very funny when popidols have to sue their old record label for the right to use old songs, band or artist names (remeber the prince/symbol story?) and whats not. i guess the labels are the start of what we see in cyberpunk, corporations that own you, mind, body and soul...
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
It might serve to look at the release of the material into a market as a contract. If the copyright holders choose to release the material into a market then they also choose, tacitly, to accept the conditions imposed by the copyright laws of the market, in this case a 50 year limit. If, as in this case, the Americans don't want to play by the British rules they should keep their product at home.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
The UK does have life plus 70, certainly for published works - writers get copyright for life, then 70 years. Some writers try to be sneaky to get extend this law, by, for example, crediting their youngest daughter as a co-author, even if she is only two years old. However, I'm guessing either laws for recorded music are different, or the law changed after this song was published.
With record companies, I wonder if they can release low quality versions into public domain, while maintaining rights to higher quality versions. So they can release 96kbit mp3 into public domain, but a CD quality version maintains or recieves copywrite.
But I think this scenario will definately have interesting results. If the track does become a hit and is public domain, how will companies distinguish their final products from one another? Will it come down to the case, additional tracks, a DVD movie?... Other ways of looping copywrite into the equation? I will be waiting for the outcome.
I suspect that in most cases, the copyright owners make most of the money on their copyrights in the first five years or so.
By ten years, most of the copyrights are nearly worthless.
I don't see any reason why copyrights should extend past twenty years.
If copyrights are the property of their owners, why not treat them as property and require that property taxes be paid on copyrights and allow the copyright owner to make the material public docmain if the property taxes exceed the income from the copyrights?
This is in Britain
Most of the successful albums from here were in the 60s, 70s, and they will lose a lot of hold on these
EMI has most of the market share here
EMI would be worst effected
British jobs lost
Con Extension
Works based upon public domain stuff still have to be promoted and distributed
Music giants still vigorously control these channels
Public Domain recordings such as Classical Music are still big earners for EMI see EMI Classics in earnings breakdown.
Summary
Jobs will go, restructuring will occur and fileswappers wil be blamed
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From the article:
... Our stuff is still selling, and there's about 250 various compilation albums out there worldwide. I'd like the period extended as soon as possible, and 95 years sounds good to me."
"It's scary," Welch said during a 37-date sold-out tour of the United Kingdom. "I only became aware of the situation last year
Yeah, sounds like he'd really be struggling if he lost the income from that 50-year-old song.
I bet we'll see a change to the law slipped through before the end of the year, though. Blair will do anything that the Americans tell him just so that he can have his ego-trip of thinking he's Bush's best friend, even as Bush pounds him in the ass. The man's a fucking disgrace to this country.
You must think in Russian.
Shouldnt an Elvis song's copyright duration be determined by the laws in the country where the work was recorded?
From my knowledge of copyright law, the duration of the copyright that is effective worldwide is specified by the laws in which the copyright was obtained. Thus, this song will expire when US law says it expires, not UK law.
Or is someone able to clarify this?
Sparks:Gadget:Beer Maker
The late '50s and '60s was more than 40 years ago! Who guaranteed anyone a right to still be profiting from music recorded before man set foot on the moon, especially when those artists are no longer around? The living Beatles, the heirs to Elvis Presley Enterprises, and anyone else who has been suckling at the copyright teat for 40 years should be grateful for what they have. Quit whining about "loss of income" from something you didn't lift a finger to produce.
I'm lucky to be paid a decent wage for the work I do today, and I'll consider myself fortunate if my job is still around next month. I sure as hell don't have any expectation that, 40 years from now, I'll still be making money from something I did today! Much less that my kids, if I ever choose to have any, will see any benefit beyond what I manage to save up and pass on to them. Even pension plans are a dying breed here in the US; when once a widow could count on her husband's years of duty to his company to provide some meager living for her when she survived him, nowadays it's generally left up to Social Security.
Why, then, is it so different when it comes to copyrighted works, music in particular? Why is it that the descendants of dead musicians feel that they're due millions of dollars for their parents' (or even grandparents') work, eternally? I don't get it. Maybe I should have been born to musicians.
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
It's only the producer's and performers' rights that expire after 50 years in the EU. This means that you won't have to pay the performers or the record company to use the record. However, the rights of the composer and text author will remain to 70 years after their death (AKA forever minus a day).
If you spread the recording without some sort of agreement (through contract or compulsory licensing) with the composer or writer, you'll acquire liability and might very well be sued.
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
Well, this reminds me of the "Famous Amos" story. Bare with me... Amos opened a cookie store in my home town in Hawaii. He was very successful. His operation was named "Famous Amos," and his ads were famously bad, always including his likeness.
Unforutately, Amos didn't have the best legal counsel, and was bought out for a lot of money, which he though was a good thing. Until he found out that he couldn't use his own name anymore. His likeness, considered a trademark, was also forbidden. He was a man without name or face.
He almost immediately opened a competing company with a Hawaiian name pronounced NO-NAH-MEI, and spelled "Noname." He had the same bad commercials with his face blacked out. I don't think that he planned to make any money this way, just protest the loss of his name and face.
Put identity in the browser.
It's an attempt to colonise the creative commons.
It will fail.
Elvis found his inspiration and many of his melodies in a common musical culture created by (ironically) generations of the poorest black American musicians. Creativity comes from many sources, but corporate profits are not one of them. This was true in the early part of the 20th century, where the sheet-music publishers tried to dominate the music industry (and failed). It is as true today.
For every "major" work copyrighted and kept out of the cultural blender, a hundred unknown artists pour their talent into creating something new.
Let them have their copyrights. It means young artists will have to search harder for their inspirations, but the results will be better for it.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
so it's our anyway.
You can't claim that 'That's all right' is a song that would not have happened if Elvis hadn't sung it.
Suttree, a weblog about casual games development
...in Japan.
You are assuming that the "artist" is the sole owner of the recording copyright, and that is rarely if ever the case. Usually the recording copyright is owned by the record company, and therefore the "death plus x years" rule would not apply.
"Was it a millionaire who said 'Imagine No Posessions?'" -- Elvis Costello
"Bitch, piss, moan, we can't rape a dead man's music catalogue for cash and many dubious "Best of" albums, boo fucking hoo, I'm just a poor boy, I need no sympathy etc etc"
Well, I got news for ya RIAA! EASY COME EASY GO, SHUT THE FUCK UP! This is LAW. You aren't allowed to profit by getting new laws in place which benefit you and nobody else! EVER! Especially not in countries which aren't corrupt like the US government! Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. If you want profit, you have to make it the old fashioned honest way: MAKING GOOD NEW MUSIC AND SELLING IT. Unfortunately, the RIAA are used to making profit and not earning it, because "they deserve it".
Fuck that. I wish the US would break them up, considering they are an illegal cartel.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Does this mean that Mickey Mouse is public domain in england?
Slashdot humor may not be funny but it certainly is not informative.
Am I simply forming a conspiracy theory, or does anyone else think the argument for extending copyright based on 'sustained revenues' is significantly boosted by hyping some ancient tune at exactly the time the point is made?
"If you create user accounts, by default, they will have an account type of Administrator with no password." KB Q293834
More "Mickey Mouse" legislation (seriously).
The Disney people didn't want MIckey Mouse become public so they have Congress expand the window of protection.
If this is going to be the case every time something comes up, it's going to be extended.
Why don't they just abolish the whole f%cking system of protection? (except those whose work is worthless)
...since the song was originally written by Arthur Crudup... but... I guess... that's alright.
Even in Europe, the song itself is not in the public domain because Athur Crudup, its composer, died only as late as 1974. In most European countries, works of performing artists are only protected for 50 years, but for the actual lyrics and music, the clock starts running after the author's death (and runs for 50 or 70 years).
That means that the European rules mainly cause classical music to enter the public domain at this point.
The key defect of the Sony Bono copyright extension act is that it does not reward the creator of the work...it extends monopoly rights to the assignees of the work.
The history of copyright is one long battle between the rights of the author and the rights of third-parties. The Sony Bono copyright extension act does nothing to reward or encourage the author...it removed many works from the public domain and established criminal sanctions for any fool who might use those works newly re-copywritten. Who pushed this law in the US? Disney. THE MOUSE almost went into the public domain and a company contemplated the demise of their core IP rights and promptly made certain THAT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN.
The Sony Bono copyright extension act is only the most current power grab. It is the camel's nose under the tent of author's rights. Creator's be damned-let's reward the assignees. Mr. Michael Jackson funds his interests with the copyright royalties from the works of McCartney & Lennon. Not one dime of those royalties reward, support or encourage either of the two living Beatles. They fund Mr. Jackson's "Neverland" ranch and his defense attorneys. All you need is love? Or, is all you need are buckets of money to fund Mr. Jackson's peculiar concept of love? Any way you look at this it stinks on ice!
You can be certain that well before the MOUSE or Jackson find their IP holdings in danger of falling into the public domain again that another extension will be enacted.
Now is the time for a major nation to upset this unearned windfall for the lucky, but uncreative, assignees of author's works. Limit the rights of publishers, purchasers and offspring to profit from the (usually) under compensated creator's works!
If individual artists controlled their own music, we wouldn't have anyone lobbying for insane copyright terms, because individuals eventually die, so there's no one to keep lobbying for more and more extensions. The problem with corporations is that they're immortal, so there's no end to the insanity. Believe.
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http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=114826&op=Rep
About the alleged "discrepancy between the United States and the EU." - Many (most?) European countries have life plus 70. I was surprised to find that Great Britain does not
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=114826&op=Rep
... It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors.
It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property.
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.
Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.
Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body.
Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices. -- Thomas Jefferson
Music has been entering the public domain there for years hasn't it?
:)
Oh yeah, this is Elvis we're talking about, heaven forbid his music ever be free.
(wait till the Beatles' hits hit the wire...)
Dont worry, in 50 years or so, some copyright will be repealed. No one will give a damn about protecting today's pop musical shite. But the old stuff will remain protected FOREVER AND EVER.
So lets see, is Elvis outraged, or some greedy money grabbing fuckwit who wants to milk their dead relative at the expense of polluting the law with even more crap? I thought so.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
So if this happens, will the online music stores not pay any longer and make an extra profit?
Apple currently gets a 13 cent cut off of each song and by the recent financial statement appears to make about 2.4 cents a song profit.
Will Apple be able to collect the 55 cents that goes to the RIAA and the 32 cents the artists get?
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
This disscusion, I guess, is rather old and pointless too, because it have been always the same..
...American.
In 50-60ties there was sheet music industry (publishers). They were a middle man, actually they did NOTHING in creation of work of art, but they wanted EVERYTHING. Profits, everything. Musicians usually didn't wanted to take care of redistribution, publishing, so they given those rights to publishers.
As anywhere, when bigger and bigger money appears in industry, middle man is always trying to gain more and more money, actually even don't caring that could turn lot of tallented people away from mainstream publishers and to try independent ones.
So, question is, when there is REASONABLE to extend copyright? I would say - a little bit, BUT not 100 years, not 'forever'. However the greed of middle man aka big fat publishing companies are actually unstoppable, as they all are
So, whatever. BUT one thing they don't know - that their actions actually shrinks their market. They looking for today's profits, don't care about tomorrow.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Elvis is dead. The idea that some 3rd party should be able to milk his work more than a quarter century after his death is obscene.
I'm all for IP when it does what it is supposed to do, encourage the production of works that contribute to and enhance our culture. What I don't like, and I know I'm not alone here, is when the concepts of IP are extended beyond all reason and abused by greedy corporate buttpirates to line their own pockets. I hate greedy corporate assholes and while I understand that economic freedom means that there is no getting rid of them, just like intellectual and artistic freedom means we have to put up with crap like Jerry Springer, that doesn't mean we can't keep them on a short leash.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Will they want to extend it again, and then again and so forth?
Jonathanjk.com
A shorter term of copyright protection would in fact encourage creation. Every artist/writer that lives on twenty years old works and has nothing new does not deserve this subsidy. As, when the artist is dead and the great-great-grandsons get the money -- what's the point ?
Also, there were some statistics that from the books published in the 1930s, more than 80% of them are currently out of print, and some literary gems that had only a small number of copies printed, can be very hard to find and may even be lost for future generation.
I'm sorry, the number you have dialed is an imaginary number. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and dial again.
Is it possible that we are going to see more and more covers, and less and less orginal material, now that many "classics" are reaching the end of their copyright protection?
Start campaigning now for more prohibative copyright rules. You'll regret not doing it after the 50 Cent / Britney duet of "I got you babe", or Timberlake's "Blue Suede Shoes"
"If people in these corporations command more influence in congress, it is only because they care about it more."
This kind of policy is not decided upon by the majority of the people. Politicians will by default side with the ones who throw gobs of money at them - on this issue it's the record companies.
Ugbog and Moon-Pixie Spears have contested the copyright expiration of the classic Earth music their late, departed genetic Mother* Britney produced in the dark half of the twenty-first century. Moon-Pixie has amassed a considerable thought-petition amongst the noble citizenry of the outer satellites of the Lewinsky-Shatner system. She has mind-beamed a long list of names to the central Solar executive, and is awaiting their synaptic consent. The music of the former Earth-President Britney has been studied extensively for the last 30 years by a range of conscious and super-conscious experts. They have all agreed that the sub-spiritual quality of her sonic poems, when combined with the post-Leno auto-referentialism that abounded at the time, make her work of particular historical importance. Moon-Pixie Spears is seeking to prevent the mass humming of Britney's work by neural-construction engineers that has been popular in the outer quadrants for decades, as this is an infringement of the original copyright provision. ( * Mother - an example of early 21st century outmoded genetic relationship nomenclature - it's common usage is all but illegal today. )
I have many classical/opera recordings from the 1950s and 1960s that were reissued on CD. It's nice to have access to those old performances, but where are the new performances and recordings? Most labels seem to be unwilling to spend money on anything that doesn't offer a good possibility of an immediate profit.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
For how long does an author own the copyright to a book (s)he wrote in Britain? AFAIK in Finland it's lifetime plus 70 years but I'm sure, could be less than that.
If copyrights are the property of their owners, why not treat them as property and require that property taxes be paid on copyrights
Not to morph the subject, but I have been proposing for years that, just like real estate is taxed at the local level, so too ownership of stocks, bonds, and other business entities (patents, copyrights) should be taxed. A tax of 1/2 of one percent would result in a lowering of the massive US income tax from 15%-25%-35% to a more manageable FIVE percent. It would spread the tax base and the wealth.
COBOL COBOL COBOL COBOL
The short answer is, people are still paying money for that product. It's right that for a certain period a recording should generate money for the artist, as long as people out there are buying it.
But that doesn't excuse this kind of greed -
As we all know, the record industry is in a bad state right now. New music is being supported less than it ever has been, mainly because the industry majors are structured to make their money from albums recorded decades ago.
If they have to look for new music to make their money from, then maybe they might have start developing bands and finding real talent again! Either that or sell even MORE Britney albums...
what are the chances the big music companies would choose to showcase a tune that is about to go into the public domain by releasing a single for it putting it through the hype machine to push it up to #3? seems they wanted to have a clear case of a song that revenue will be lost on if copyright is not extended. am i just being too skeptical?
What Future?
So merely because the US has fucked up copyright laws, every other country has to follow suit for the sake of uniformity?!
Oh yeah, that makes sense!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
We always knew that media content owners are greedy, this is no news. The question is what should we do. I believe that the only solution is to stop paying for content. Stop paying for music, for movies, for software, for books, etc. The goal of such boycott should not be to impress or persuade anyone, but to give as little money as possible to copyright violators (i.e. those who violate the very purpose of copyright that is enriching the public domain). Don't worry about artists, musicians or set builders, just spend the money on something else. If you like a film or a tune, download it from P2P, buy a pirated copy or (if you have no other option), rent it for 1$ on DVD.
The goal is not to break media companies financially, one person can't do it. The goal is to feel good about not contributing to the ongoing rape of the public domain.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
buy the phonIE payper liesense hypenosys softwar gangster felon execrable from the kingdumb of stock markup FraUDs.
phreaking malasians? don't they know whois in charge of US?
next, for the anxious/annoyed/abused 'public':
trustworthycomputing.com
"So, it might actually be reasonable to give infinite ownership to the creator. Probably not a good practical idea, but reasonable people could at least make a good moral argument."
Why? I haven't seen "a good moral argument" for that case.
But I can make an easy argument NOT to make them infinite. The person who created the work will not live forever.
"And all this makes the "X years plus life of author" make sense, I suppose. It's a balance."
Yet 50 years is ALSO "a balance".
What is the criteria for choosing one over the other?
"My moral threshold would be much higher actually (X=100 years maybe), but from an economic standpoint, I really hate to see a valuable work go to waste."
Why is your "moral threshold" that high? Why do you not consider economics in your "moral threshold"?
The government (funded by the people) has to protect those copyrights. Where is the benefit to the people of that action if the works only enter the PUBLIC domain long after they've ceased to be of any value to the PUBLIC?
Your position would be stronger if the INDIVIDUALS held the copyrights to their creations.
But now it is mostly the corporations that hold those copyrights.
The extensions are designed so that every bit of value can be extracted long before the works end up in the public domain.
Which is why Disney fights for extensions every time Mickey Mouse is in danger of hitting the public domain.
"People working in the recording industry have as much of a right to lobby for rights as you have to lobby against them."
... I just don't see stacking the legal system so they get them.
It's the amount of money that is spent that is the difference. Disney spends a LOT more.
"These laws do, after all, benefit some people."
Yep, but mostly it is the corporate executives who benefit. Do we REALLY need to give them more benefits?
"It's not like corporations are just big evil moneymaking machines."
Take out "evil" and restate it as desire....
"It's not like corporations don't want to be big moneymaking machines."
There, that's closer to the truth.
"They are run by people just like any other business, and those people have needs and desires."
Trophy wives, expensive houses, yachts
"If people in these corporations command more influence in congress, it is only because they care about it more."
Read "care about it more" as "spend more money on it".
"I have to admit, though, that the really long copyrights in the US are a bit unreasonable."
Unreasonable to YOU, maybe.
From the corporation viewpoint, the MORE material they control for MORE years means MORE potential income.
My point is the corporations can go fuck themselves. I have yet to see why 50 years is NOT an acceptable time frame.
Recall that one key argument for the Sonny Bono copyright extension act was that it was needed to make the US consistent with Europe. Now the Europeans are saying they need to change their laws to be consistent with the US. It's beautiful --- they make "progress" by just leapfrogging each other.
... doing what? Who wants to bet that they extend copyrights just a little beyond the US in some area, so the US will then have to "catch up"?
-- The EU makes compositions death of the author + 70 years, and records date of recording + 50 years
-- The US becomes "consistent" by making all copyrights death of the author + 70 years
-- The EU restores "consistency" by
I'm not in the UK or anywhere in the EU, but for those who are I'd like to point out that about now would be a very good time to bring to the attention of your politicians things like Project Gutenberg, which directly benefit from the expiry of copyright.
Certainly part of the problem is that it's not always clear what possible benefits there could possibly be for ever letting works exit copyright. Gutenberg is an active project that's both becoming succesful, and demonstrates that people are out there trying to make an active effort to benefit from existing law.
If politicians don't realise that people are benefiting from existing law, they'll have far less reason to consider not changing it when lobbied by the corporates. It's a bonus that Gutenberg can quite correctly claim that rather than ripping off other people's work, it's saving and making accessible a lot of valuable resources that most likely would simply have vanished otherwise.... and without a reasonable expiry of copyright this simply coldn't happen.
-1 Typical republican
I thought it was 50 year after the death of the artist?
Looters.com
... Our stuff is still selling, and there's about 250 various compilation albums out there worldwide. I'd like the period extended as soon as possible, and 600 years sounds good to me."
European Copyright Clock Expired on Shakespeare Hits
LONDON (Billhoard) - Over four hundred years after it was first released in the England, Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet", "Macbeth", and other plays are still hits across the globe.
Shakespeare's works have been printed by the tens of millions, with hundreds of theater groups preforming thousands of performances every year for untold millions of consumers. For the original author and publisher the celebration is long over.
If there are no changes in European copyright law, the play will languish in public domain. Anyone will can release or even preform it without paying royalties to the authors performer's heirs. Publishers are losing a fat wads of cash all across Europe.
As Shakespeare's works are being hailed by some as some of the greatest works in the English language, more and more works are falling into public domain.
The Shakespeare case illustrates the importance of the issue for publishing companies in Europe. The lost profits are incalculable.
WAKEUP CALL
"I regard this week's anniversary as a wakeup call and a call to arms to step up a gear or two in our campaign to lobby for longer terms in the EU," said Jim E. Monet, executive chairman of Brutish Publishing Industry, in a recent speech.
Cecil R. Logik added, "The lapse copyright on the explosion of British popular writings and music, not just the Shakespeare, but many other British artists, is is already happening. If nothing is done they will suffer loss of income not just for their sales in the U.K. but their sales across the globe."
An increasing number of works will start falling into public domain in the coming years.
Star Vin R. Tist is bass guitarist with the Retired, originally the backing group for Manny Dedd. Dedd's and the Retired's copyrights will start to expire when they hit the 50-year mark in 2009.
"It's scary," Tist said during a 37-date sold-out tour of the United Kingdom. "I only became aware of the situation last year
Against this background, it is not surprising that the extension of the term of duration of copyrights is the publishing industry's main priority on the legislative agenda in Europe.
The EU is reviewing its past directives on imaginary property, notably the EU Term of Protection scheme directive. With this in mind, trade body the Federation United of Artist Leeching Lawyers (FU-ALL) last year asked the European Commission for an extension of Term of Protection scheme for producers and artists with the goal of extending copyright beyond the international norms and doing so retroactively, as was done in the United States.
The FU-ALL has started a campaign to raise awareness among policy manipulators and legislators on the issue. It targets EU member states, the EC and the Parliament.
"We are using any opportunity we have to highlight the issue during meetings with the commission and MEPs," said Brussels-based FU-ALL senior propaganda executive Cammi Paine-Trubutor.
Looters/Billhoard
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
They could at least allow the copyright to expire with the author.
This boil-up may or may not cause the UK to change their laws, at least for now. But what is going to happen when it comes time for the music of The Beatles to be affected by this? If these laws aren't changed now, this flap is just going to occur again then, and probably with a lot more fervor.
Don't get me wrong here, I am for keeping the laws the way they are. I just see a lot more controversy looming in the future.
I am an Indie film maker. most of my films have either indie music in them, after I secured both the song's and sync rights to it. But I also use a large amount od public domain music. A good example is a film that we are currently shooting. A period piece about irish in colonial america. we re-record many of those irish tunes with local artists who gladly give up their sync rights to the songs we ask them to play/record.
So I guess I am one of those horrible and EVIL people that are using the music of these poor helpless and dead songwriters who's property is being mercilessly ripped from them by the tax collectors so I can subvert their music, image and make them horribly poor and make their families suffer.
I am an Evil evil person.
Maybe I should go to corperate jail.. anyone know whereI should turn myself in?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Actually, that's EXACTLY what they are.
The solution to corporations trying to take over the world? Socialism.
And it will take a socialist revolution to get there. These bastards aren't giving up NUTHIN without a fight.
"If someone creates a work and doesn't want to share it with me, that's their business. What if Disney made Mickey Mouse and then threw it away? Oh well, I can't stop them."
And their work will NEVER enter public domain. Copyright only protects work that is distributed.
"And yes, 50 years is a balance too. I never suggested otherwise, that's why I left it "X"."
But you also said...
"And all this makes the "X years plus life of author" make sense, I suppose. It's a balance."
How about 1 year then? That too is "a balance".
"I think probably the most important thing is stability. Investors will get scared if the government doesn't protect old copyrights as much as they do new copyrights because it's an indicator that they might not protect new copyrights as much as old copyrights."
What "investors" are you talking about?
"Stability is very important when it involves something as fundamental as property rights. We can't change copyright law around every few years because of a change of public opinion, because changing copyright protection is, in and of itself, bad for the economy."
How so is changinge copyright protection "bad for the economy"?
Simple.
But but but what about their spouse? What about dependants? Get real... life insurance, savings, investments just like everyone else on the planet.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Don't get me wrong--I think the idea that content owners should be able to milk profits from decades-old work done by a deceased person is ludicrous. But it's not nearly as damaging to society and culture as a whole as keeping everything else out of the public domain just to satisfy a few copyright-holding freeloaders.
Well, what of today's songs will survive for 70 years after the artist's death?
Beatles maybe, guys like Sting and Madonna - barely, and there is NO WAY that B.Spears or Eminem will sell a single track then...
Is there music being written today that you think will make it for that long? I personally doubt that.
The copyright on sound recordings expires 50 years after publication. The copyright on the text, considered a work in itself, only expires 70 years after the death of the maker.
So while a sound will expire, the song as recorded is a modification of the original text, and thus still protected. Samples of the song can be used freely, the whole song is still copyrighted.
the pun is mightier than the sword
This is my aesthetic response to an annoying pop star who did little other than be famous for not being attractive in the company of someone who portrayed airhead/skank/easy. Comedic contrast. It was funny that they couldn't sing but tried anyway - it was satire to some members of the audience. If you and I cannot agree on what the performance was - how are we likely to quantify it's value?
Artforms meld with one another very readily, making it difficult to understand exactly how the proportions of each incorprated element affect the audience. Ask yourself what a video has to do with a song and you'll see a facet of what I mean. Is that Marketing the product or is it actually the Product - because second ago the song was the product. You can see how an accountant would be pulling hairs trying to departmentalize the beans, what about a legislator trying to ANTICIPATE tomorrow's perceptions of What Art Is?
Sono Bono:Fledgling TV industry ;) And no one can really stand that "I got you babe" song unless they just fell in love last week.
Tell me the recording industry has a good track record in ANY facet of it's business and I'll call you a liar. In Sony's 15 minutes the industry was still slavering over the profit of The Silver Beatles. Perhaps Sony's insight is corrupt because he was a young star. He brought a "valid" insight indeed - but a balanced insight??? Stars are/were INTENSELY Catered-To heavily at some point in their development. Perhaps his drive was flawed by his experience - he ended up a politician remember
The point is that copywriting aesthetic 'products' AND enforcing the law is a difficult thing to do. When's the last time a band paid royalties for playing a cover song live? It is illegal you know. Perhaps there is no product except the media that art is pressed into and the other products that spin the media and amplify and project the contents.
Stuff that matters.
The ideal is that of the Noble Thief.
--I won't shoot anybody for you, I won't put up with ego-impaired men with mustaches ordering me about, I won't eat food filled with chemicals just because that's "How Things Are". And I certainly won't pay for Elvis tunes unless they come packaged in a Bruce Campbell film.
The authorities can tell me I have to, and they can put it into law, but I'll just smile and nod and then do the right thing when they've finished spouting off. Gives me no stress, life is less expensive, and it makes men with ego issues spin in circles and turn red in the face. Bonus!
-FL
You don't have to go that far. Just stop treating corporations like humans...with human RIGHTS.
Moll.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
All of these predated copyright. Copyrights originated in 1710 in the UK as a part of a package to allow government censorship combined with addressing the concerns of the tightly licenses printing business - NOT the authors -, particularly in protecting them against American competition (American competition was a major factor in the introduction of patents as well)
It was first with the US constitution and then the US copyright actor of 1790 that the focus was on author and on securing innovation.
Unfortunately, you're a faggot. The only people who support Kerry are minorities, people who saw Fahrenheit 9/11 and think they know everything about everything now, people who don't research before they vote, and "feel-good" treehugging faggots.
Can someone in the EU please set up a server to distribute this song starting Jan 1, 2005.
I assume that Disney Corp's US polititions will pressure the EU to adopt some Bonno like Media Corp protection extention.
But before then, it is legal to set up a timed server.
I still do not quite get how a retro-active law can be legal.
Setting up such a server may help show this point.
The Proms this year is celebrating English music, and the crossroads it reached in 1934 - Elgar, Holst and Delius died in 1934, while Peter Maxwell Davis and Harrison Birtwhistle were born in 1934.
It would be a great tribute to Elgar, Delius and Holst if, as their music comes out of copyright at the end of this year, their work was to truly enter teh public domain - the Mutopia project springs to mind.
Sadly, it will be another 15 years before Vaughan WIlliams enters the public domain, as I want to use some of his sacred music, but the royalties quoted by the copyright holder are too much.
Dunstan
The last scintilla of doubt just rode out of town
Copyrights are one of the few property rights actually mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. The key passage is:
" To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
Notice the phrase 'limited Times'. Evidently the supreme court interprets this to mean: "as long as the law lists a limit it is ok - even when the law is changed ex post facto to change that period.
Funny, I thought the constitution strictly forbids ex post facto laws - but nothing bothers lawyers; the law to them is what ever they can get away with. Just another reason to follow Shakespeare's advice and "first kill all the lawyers".
Most of the problems with both patents and copyrights would disappear if the Constitution had said that only the individual authors and inventors could own copyrights and patents - not fictitious beings like corporations.
There's more to it than digital copies. In the UK, and I would imagine other countries, a number of "classics" are printed by the Wordsworth publishers. These classics retail for 1UKP. Yes, that's right, 1UKP!
A regular paperback will sell for 6-7UKP.
Maybe I should go to corperate jail.. anyone know whereI should turn myself in?
Don't worry about turning yourself in, the grammer police should be breaking down your door in a few minutes.
It's interesting that the rights owner say this (i.e. surviving relative, investors or record companies). May it be due to the love of money..hmm. I wonder what the artists would say. Oh no they can't because they're dead. Hmm seems like 50 years is just fine.
"The Beat Goes On", final song on Britney's debut album "...baby one more time", is a Sonny and Cher cover. ;)
Moll.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
Its clear the co. involved want copyrights to NEVER expire. Lets go all the way right now and not waste my time 50yrs later again.
Have the debate. Should copyrights expire? Yes or No. Stop fiddling with the number of years.
Copyright, in my estimation has never been about the individual. The government doesnt write laws for individuals, it writes them for society at large. These laws were originally intended to make sure that authors kept creating content, not to make them rich. They were protecting society both from a lack of innovation and from losing their ability to build off of their cultural past. An idea the US govenment has obviously overlooked or given up upon. Maybe they dont want us to remember the past, like a Brave New World, consume, consume, consume...
This isnt about protecting an authors ability to indefinitely maintain ownership, its about assuring authors that if they write something new for some period of time they will be protected in the name of promoting progress for the community. The U.K. has it right, 50 years is fair and this is not about protecting individuals.
I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something. (Charles Manson)
we here in the US do require parity for a sane treatment of intellectual property. These inequities are unfair to the people damaged by them in each instance.
So for that reason we should adopt the UK model of expiring copyrights here in the US.
"I think probably the most important thing is stability. Investors will get scared if the government doesn't protect old copyrights as much as they do new copyrights because it's an indicator that they might not protect new copyrights as much as old copyrights."
I don't follow the logic there. You're suggesting that because we have a sensible law that means that copyright expires after 50 years, "investors" will think that a copyright which is 5 years old is "not as protected?"
Here's the point: laws should not be written around the whims of "investors."
I know it's a hard point to get in today's world where it seems that large corporations might as well just bypass the whole legislature and write the darn statutes themselves (simply because it saves time and does away with the pretence that our representatives can think for themselves) but it is the critical point here.
Sometimes laws are not made to "help the economy", they're written because they're morally the better course of action. Copyright is not a right, it's a privilege extended by government to afford a balance between the creator of a work and those who may become dependent upon it.
If these corporations and lobbying groups are now complaining that they "didn't know" that this time limit was approaching and that it's an awful shame as despite the fact that the artist is long dead, they're still able to part people with their money then I suggest that they hire better advisors. It's not as if the 50 year time period was a closely guarded secret now is it?
On U2's album "Rattle and Hum" (1998), the song God Part II contians the following lyric:
"I don't believe in the 1960's, the Golden Age of Pop, You glorify the past when the future dries up".
I believe that Bono (rather than Sonny Bono) really knew that Pop music is designed to be thrown away after its has been useful. Perhaps if the major record companies thought about this more carefully, then they would invest more into new music and make even more money than they do now. They are just holding on to what they think is valuable, at a risk that they will eventually have no new business.
...of it, is that its not the existence of copyright that drives creativity and innovation, but the expiration of them. Disney, for example, would probably work a lot harder to make new, interesting and lovable characters and stories if they knew that their current stable was about to be released. A author who wanted to continue having an income would be more likely to write new stories if he knew that the royalty checks from his twenty-year old best-seller were about to stop...
What?
Disney was built on works in the public domain -- Snow White, Pinocchio, Cinderella, The Jungle Book, etc.
"Dave, I stand still--the conclusions jump to me!" - Bill McNeal, NewsRadio
Until they effect you directly, then complain and demand the laws to be changed.
What hypocrites... They should have ALL their music rights taken away from ALL their songs.
I had hoped the 'Me-Generation' died in the 90's
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Which man's a disgrace to which country? From context you appear to be talking about Blair, but you're writing American rather than English.
So, its the artists fault for selling their ownership and control to the music companies.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
What is truely scary is finding out that the recordings of Cliff Richard and the Shadows will be entering the public domain pretty soon.
Please! Please EU! Extend copyrights to death plus a 1000 years ASAP!!!!
Nice idea, but not practical. The British Library used to encourage publishers to send it copies of all periodicals for permanent archival in addition to book publications. Long since they can't afford the space. There is a LOT of transient and trite material out tehre covered by copyright law.
Just imagine archiving everything transmissed for TV anywhere in the world for posterity.
Actually, PG is the proof that your politicians would use to show that works in the public domain do not contribute to the economy. PG runs on the stringy-est of shoe strings, depends on volunteer labor, and gives stuff away for free! What could be less productive? (from an economic standpoint)
LaMona
Project Gutenberg: Free as in Free Beer, but without the beer.
I just read
What's sadly missing is a discussion of the DAMAGE done to society since people cannot create derivitive works. Imagine for a minute if Walt Dizney could not make movies of Cinderella, Peter Pan, Scrooge, and other historicial fiction whose copyright has expired. Why is it that they can build on the works of others, but not allow others to build on their works? If they were _truly_ interested in defending copyright, they would find the descendents of these works and pay them the "outrageous" royalties that they would deserve. But WD doesn't do this, they waot all the way till Mouse is about to expire and _then_ lobby to extend copyright (otherwise, they'd have to pay back royalties on Fantasia's music).
If the record companies or artists were unwilling to accept a 50 year copyright term then they shouldn't have recorded it 50 years ago. This work is simply doing what is was supposed to do from the outset, become free for everyone to use as they wish. It's a good thing.
After all, the US constitution calls for a limited monopoly, both in nature and duration, to promote the advancement of the arts and sciences... to encourage people to publish music.
I think that Elvis got all the encourgement he neaded. I think the Beatles have been amply encouraged. I don't see any reason for the US law to remain in conflict with European law *and* the US constitution indefinitely.
Copyright should last 5 years and not be renewable, or should someones childrens children children be able to own and make money from a job done a longtime ago.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
For every "major" work copyrighted and kept out of the cultural blender, a hundred unknown artists pour their talent into creating something new.
And then get sued for accidentally copying part of a copyrighted song into their own songs. It happened to George Harrison soon after the Beatles broke up. In general, how can one prove that the songs that one has written are in fact original musical works?
If you don't like this agreement, don't enter into it.
I cannot avoid entering into an "agreement" of sorts with songwriters and their publishers. Hearing a song on commercial FM radio or on a retail store's background music feed even once taints me with "access" (legal term) to the song's melody, and for the rest of my life, I'm obligated not to use n consective notes from that melody in any songs that I write, where n is a one-digit number. Even pseudorandom generation of melodies using music theory can produce and has produced works that would violate copyright if published.
(Read More...)
First of all, comparing property rights to copyrights is ok, up to a point, but there's a "fatal flaw" in the logic. In the case of "property rights", a peson's right is much less than "absolute" because it starts interfering with the rights of others. (EG. Your example of a person who owns a piece of a river, and yet isn't allowed to build a dam on his/her property and charge others for the water.)
Since copyright covers intellectual properties, not physical ones, these problems don't really come up with copyright.
Instead, copyright law *should* simply exist to the extent that it helps further innovation and creation of new works. When you really think about it, that statement boils down to making sure someone is rewarded financially and/or protected from others ripping off his/her original ideas without giving credit where credit is due. Where does extended a copyright well past the lifetime of the creator help achieve either of these 2 things? I'd say it doesn't!
All it really does is put limitations on the public's access to creative works, long past the point where such limits ensure the creator is compensated/rewarded for creating them.
I have to pay a yearly property tax based on the value of my real property as set by the assessor (at the town or city level of government here in the USA).
They look at the price other properties like mine have sold for in the last few years and from time to time check to see if I have increased the value by fixing the place up or if the value has increased because of some other change in the neighborhood, like if a lot of other people have fix up there properties.
So, in the world of copyright the value of the copyrighted work could be assessed based on sales of the rights and sales of copies and the value of other similar works. Based on the assessed value the tax could be set.
This would mean that little or no tax would fall on this post as it brings in no revenue and there is nobody would make a meaningful offer of any value for the copyright itself. Now if I someday become famous the value of this post might increase and I might have to pay the copyright tax or let it go. For the garage band hitting it big the cost of the tax would be little compared to being able to sell copies.
The cost of maintaining a copyright would change based on the value of the work (both as a work and as copies). The worst that could happen to someone how did not pay the tax would be to have the copyright put up for tax auction. If it was worth something someone who could pay the tax would by it or if there were no bids it could go into the public domain.
I've read and seen numerous interviews of her and she's said that she started writing the Harry Potter stories as bed time stories for her children.
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
I don't get this. Wasn't the Sonny Bono act ostensibly to bring the US copyright law in line with the EU?
WeRelate.org - wiki-based genealogy
... there needs to be an intellectual property tax.
I'm still not sure when the "death" or a corporations will happen. Corporations can only die when states remove their status and even if that happens they can always give IP, not internet protocol, to another corp. In effect they can't die and IP lasts forever. Morally for me I count copyrights as lasting 5 to 10 years. Yes Atari through SNES games may technically be re-released now but they are outmoded. If they were public, the public would be better off. OF course this doesn't apply to new games I think we should write to our reps., UK or US, and ask why they think IP should last so long, different from the founders thoughts and different from any societal benefits. Of course that won't happen because we are a lazy country. My username is what most Americans and the whole world even are like.
Why don't you guys have friends or journals?
They can keep making money even if it's public domain! Make a new "best of" Elvis CD and sell it? They can do that. Remix his tunes with whatever hot new teeny-bopper's on the top 10? They can do that (that even gets them a fresh copyright on the new derived work).
What they can't do, is prevent anyone else from doing it as well. So we get *gasp* competition! A foreign concept for the pigopolists, to be sure, and one they're deathly afraid of, but any "we can't make money" argument is undeniably horseshit and they should be called on it at every opportunity.
Isn't copyright a means of seeking a balance between the creator's right to enjoy the fruits of his labor and society's ability to build upon that work?
Compare copyright to patents. Why is a patent (in the US) limited to 20-odd years? Because society stands to benefit from the short terms of the patent. Many generic drugs (Ibuprophen, for example) are so commonly available because the patent expired. What if the patent terms were 90 years? How much more would we pay?
[Perhaps we would not pay as much as we do for intra-patent drugs because the drug makers would have a longer timeline to recoop their investment?]
Let's expand this discussion a bit wider. What if the Colt revolver enjoyed a 90 year patent instead of a 20 year patent? Why, Colt could rest on his laurels for the rest of his life while the rest of the century paid him a premium price for an innovative-but-flawed design. Or, the invention of the steam locomotive. What if that patent had prevented improvements on the design, and derivative developments? Or, the invention of the telegraph had been extended such that the telephone (voice-over-telegraph) wasn't invented until the early 20th Century? Would we even have an Internet today, or a Slashdot to *freely* exchanged these ideas?
Patents and copyrights are a legalized monopoly to reward innovators. They are meant to be short-term because innovation feeds itself. Society is benefited by innovation. Overlong rights stifles innovation.
I've read discussions of the economic benefit to be had by allowing BFPs (Big Publishers) have multi-generational copyrights. I'm a BFP, so my ability to create an industry off of generation's old creativity and then strangle any competition is a societal economic benefit? How long can I prevent somebody from reproducing stuffed rats?
Or, in another realm. Look at the Gutenberg Project. They are hindered from digitizing over a generation of out-of-print works. Nobody is economically benefiting from the books being suppressed from the Public Domain. Society might be repressed from benefiting from the knowledge.
I mean, if the GP is able to take a rare out-of-print book and make it available to the masses via their on-line archival, is this not benefiting society? What if I download an old book from their archival, and reading it spurs me to write the Great American Novel--spinning off a whole deluge of movies and mini-series, book tours, etc? As a member of society, isn't this an economic boon that is stifled by too-long copyrights?
Wouldn't it be great if the USG bothered to fund the GP in such an effort?
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
The copyright law being mentioned here is the one regarding mechanical copyrights, i.e. the rights to a physical recording. These rights in the UK apply 50 years after the end of the calendar year in which the recording was first issued, no matter where in the world that recording was first issued. In the case of a recording that has not been commercially issued, the mechanical copyright expires 50 years after the end of the calendar year in which the recording was made.
There are numerous record companies in Europe issuing compilations under these rules. For example last week I went looking for a Charlie Parker compilation, and I must have seen around 10 different such albums, all containing similar tracks, in one store alone. The packaging and annotation of these issues varied accordingly, from very shoddy (misspelt titles and no cover photograph) to a 40 page illustrated booklet with full session listings.
There are a few labels with a reputation for making quality album, some even better that the label with the full rights to such recordings - labels such as JSP for Blues, Proper for Jazz, Blues and Country, and Naxos Historical for Classical. The original label, though, have the advantage as the alternate takes usually expire many years later, as their original year of issue was usually many years after the initial recording.
I believe the law in Spain is slightly different, as there's a Spanish label called Definitive who have recently issued some recordings from 1954. These have appeared in some UK stores, even though their contents don't expire until the end of the year.
The copyright rules regarding music publishing expire 50 years after the composer deaths, so the composers' estates will still be getting paid.
Roll the copyrights back to a more reasonable 20 years. And renewable ONCE. And make them non-transferrable. (Only the author may own the copyright. Or renew it.)
I would bet that almost all the voters would approve of that political change. Isn't that what you mean by a political agreement?
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
You say: "No, copyright protects every work."
But I was replying to his previous comment: "If someone creates a work and doesn't want to share it with me, that's their business. What if Disney made Mickey Mouse and then threw it away? Oh well, I can't stop them."
Now, if I write something and do not distribute it. How long before what I wrote falls into the public domain?
"If I write the Great American Novel then have a heart attack and die, the EMS person cannot take my work and publish it as his."
Copyright is all about DISTRIBUTION.
In your example, the "EMS person" would be DISTRIBUTING your work. Then copyright law would kick in.
If he took your novel and never distributed it, copyright law would not be involved.
My primary point was stability. Copyright law is sort of a promise by the government: "We promise to protect your work for 50 years if you create it now".
If we start changing copyright law all around, especially anything that reduces copyright terms, or anything that gives less protection to and older work than a newer work, it's a sign of instability. The change itself can have negative effects on investment in new works.
And I wouldn't take investment so lightly. People might still write music, but are people going to be paid to write software if nobody is willing to invest money in a software company? Are people going to be paid to write extensive research texts? People won't invest if they see copyright law as a moving target.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
Anglia = Part of Europe (present day England)
Saxony = Part of Europe (present day Germany)
Ergo:
Anglo-Saxon == European
Could the French (and anyone else) stop using the term "Anglo-Saxon" to mean US/UK, or (in the more general sense) British-Empire-derived.
Don't even get me started on the correct usage of "Semite".
Anglo-saxons are Europeans. These are the races of early European settlers the Angles and the Saxons (IIRC - which I probably don't).
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
...would be to ban corporations from owning copyrights (and patents too). Only living individuals should be to own them, and after the individual's death, the IP becomes public domain, period. If a corporation should desire to posess such IP, then, well, it can license the temporary use of that IP from that individual. After the individual dies, then the corp can use it freely. Hmmm, that might make incentive for corporation bigshots to start killing IP owners, however.
This tidbit isn't really that new. In fact small/bigtime music publishers have had a bonanza in the 80's and 90's with tons of classical music recordings based on the original recordings (note "original") the 1930's and 1940's.
Tons and tons of 10-20 or even 40 collection CD's with various digitally remastered recordings from famous archestra's from that period. Possible because the original recording entered the public domain.
Final question to ponder. Those new master recordings, based on the original recording (now in the public domain) would they be copyrighted or not?
...encourages investment, which is a good thing for the economy.
Copyright holders *knew* it was 50 years when they first got the copyright.
"If we start changing copyright law all around, especially anything that reduces copyright terms, or anything that gives less protection to and older work than a newer work, it's a sign of instability. The change itself can have negative effects on investment in new works."
The thing is this. The only changes being 'proposed' are those being lobbied for by the special interest groups, e.g. the music industry. There is no change being made to "give less protection" to older works.
The older works are getting the same protection that they had when they were new works; the understanding was always that they would expire in 50 years.
I don't understand your notion of "anything that gives less protection to and older work than a newer work." By *definition* if it's an older work it's already enjoyed many more years of protection under the terms of its copyright than a newly copyrighted work.
What right do corporations have to buy dead artists work and sell it back to us? By the time of the 49th year of a work's copyright, how many times are we expected to have bought it?
There comes a time when a work has been around for long enough to form part of the cultural background of society. If a work was extremely popular it may even be an important part of our modern cultural heritage. It's only right that, at that point, the use of the work by all and for all becomes possible.
I said that copyright only protects work that is distributed.
Your first attempt to prove I was wrong involved a publisher distributing a work.
Your second attempt to prove I was wrong involves a friend having a publisher distribute a work.
Hmmmmmm.... I'm still seeing distribution in those examples.
Here's a hint. Try finding an example where copyright is violated and no distribution takes place. Okay? Thanks. Buh bye!
it gives plenty of time for the Widow of the artist to die and the children to grow up and establish themselves. The idea is if the artist dies, there needs to be some way for his family to get by. The balance is to protect the artists families, not his employer. And it gets worse, since current copyright law now lets you sign away your copyright for all eternity (used to be after a set # of years, it went back to you, but a spellchecker working for congress put a rider on an unrelated bill and it passed. That spellchecker now works for the RIAA).
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New Copyright Law Proposal: Your copyright of your creations lives as long as you do.
:)
(IE: if you live to be 100 years old then you're copyright(s) last 100 years. If you live to be 20, then your copyrights live to be 20 as well, reguardless of age when copyrighted)
See, now if companies want to protect the longevity of copyrights, they'll have to invest in your well being.
So it's a win-win for everyone. Big Corps. get to milk copyrights, and authors get free healthcare, etc. And the world benfits from the R&D from medical research which goes in to the healthcare of the author.
Always scheming
A Penny for my thoughts? Here's my two cents. I got ripped off!
If I use the same meoldy from an indie artist, I will be in violation of the law just the same as if I used the same meoldy from Madonna or Britney.
Not entirely true. If a song has been overplayed on commercial FM radio, it will be easier for the copyright owner to convince the jury that you have heard the song. Esther and Britney have more money to buy time on commercial radio stations than your average indie band has; therefore, it's not likely that an indie song will become overplayed on commercial FM radio and thus pollute the entire population with a presumption of "access" to the work.
Copyright is implicit; no reg. required.
Copyright protection isn't a privilege, unless you start with the assumption that nobody has the right to publish anything unless the government specifically says so. That's not true, at least not in the US or UK. Rather, copyright is a restriction imposed on everybody other than the copyright holder. But more than that, it is a Contract between the copyright holder and the public. The public pays for the government to protect the material for a limited time, and at the end of that time the public gets free access to the material. That eventual free access is the payoff to the public, in exchange for the expense of maintaining and enforcing the copyright system.
The copy-making industry, which has largely turned into a rights-control industry, takes the very different position that the only thing the public is ever entitled to is the privilege of paying to use whatever material is offered, under whatever conditions are imposed by the rights holder. This is a new and one-sided philosophy, which does not reflect the way copyright was ever meant to function.
What's wrong with the US Congress extending copyright for the entire useful life of the material is that the public essentially gets nothing of value when the copyright expires. That's assuming that Congress ever actually does let copyrights expire from now on. The US Supreme Court has specifically ruled that "a limited time" can mean "forever" if Congress says so.
The ORIGINAL discussion went like this:
jadavis said:
"If someone creates a work and doesn't want to share it with me, that's their business. What if Disney made Mickey Mouse and then threw it away? Oh well, I can't stop them."
I replied:
"And their work will NEVER enter public domain. Copyright only protects work that is distributed."
Note how the discussion is about copyrighted works falling into the public domain. That was even what the article was about (Elvis' recording falling into the public domain in England).
So, nfras takes half of that statement and drops the entire discussion of whether such a work would fall into the public domain and goes off on a tangent.
Also, I do not believe he knows the difference between copyright and trademark. But that's a different thread. Let's get back to YOUR example:
"Now let's say I write the Great American Novel, and I tuck it under my mattress and forget about it. It's not published, but it is protected by copyright."
Here's something. Suppose it wasn't YOUR novel, but your Grandfather's novel. Never published. But it has since passed the copyright expiration date.
Would it be illegal for the thief to PUBLISH it (under your Grandfather's name) once it had been stolen? Without your (his heir) permission?
This is the original discussion. Can an un-published, un-released, un-distributed work end up in the public domain without the consent of the heirs?
Allowing the terms on old works to change implies that the length could also be reduced. Isn't that less stable than saying "you get the term you started with"? Your incentive for creating and distributing a work is whatever the current term of copyright is. If we change the bargain to "oh, and we'll change the length of the copyright to be longer, but never shorter, and it will apply to your work as well", then not extending copyright in the future will be taken as "stealing" from those poor disenfranchised authors from 250 years ago (i.e. now) who were assured that copyright would be extended indefinitely.
If legislation is passed to require that the length of copyright for a particular work is limited (and guaranteed) to the length at time of creation, I hope we at least rescind the extended terms that have been granted the last few rounds first. Like that would happen.
That's certainly a fair comment. I guess my point is intended to be that Project Gutenberg is an active demonstration that some people do actually care about copyright expiring. Irrespective of its economic feasibility, it's a clear example of people getting up and doing something positive as a result of existing law.
It's only arguably directly useful for the economy, perhaps depending on your point of view. To that extent I don't suppose it would be a great example for politicians that have already decided to prioritise the corporate economy in their decisions. Not all politicians, especially outside the US, are in that frame of mind, however.
Where I live (New Zealand) to the best of my knowledge, there are some quite specific restrictions placed on how much money the members of parliament and those campaigning to be are allowed to receive from sponsors. The result appears to be that they do play to the people a lot more often. It could easily be a big misperception that everyone has, but they do tend to react to people at least as much as they react to corporations.
Here at least, if you can convince citizens, then the government will often follow. To be fair, of course, a country of 4 million people is probably a little easier to reach in a short time than the 300-odd million people distributed throughout the USA.
And I wouldn't take investment so lightly. People might still write music, but are people going to be paid to write software if nobody is willing to invest money in a software company? Are people going to be paid to write extensive research texts? People won't invest if they see copyright law as a moving target.
Uh - I wouldn't worry about copyright length and software.
Suppose we made the limit 10 years - which is incredibly short. That would mean that some versions of DOS would still be under copyright. Win95 would actually be copyrighted, and who still runs that?
If you haven't recovered your software investment after 10 years, you aren't going to. Who pays money for 10-year-old software? You probably can't even buy a version of VMS that old...
On the other hand, some of the earlier linux innovations would actually be non-GPL public domain, Of course, I doubt this would damange copyleft - I doubt anybody will be embrace-and-extending linux-0.4.1.
I can see needs for longer copyrights in the book/music industries, where there are considerable sales after the first few years - but even then the lion's share is initial sales.
Look at classical music - lots of money is made and yet there are no copyrights except on individual performances (except for modern works, of course).
For software, 10 years should be the largest amount of protection that one could need. Software companies are already innovating more quickly than that - I see no reason to need to offer incentive to keep them innovating. If they don't innovate on a faster-than-10-year basis, they'll go under just from the competition.
Watch the British arts and popular culture far surpass the US in creativity and innovation in the coming years since they do not have the stranglehold copyright law that we do. The only group the US law benefits is multinational corporations. Absurd.
No - this analogy doesn't work.
These are new customers, buying new copies of the product. At this point it's not possible to make copies of houses...
You're first paragraph makes a good point. I think, ultimately, the track record of increasing copyright duration makes investors more comfortable, and I think that's the justification for retroactive extension. I'm just trying to show that the track record on the past affects future confidence, and we can't disregard that effect, even if there are some other factors. I think they never should have increased copyright from 50 years, it had no real benefit and created many problems. We should be careful of backtracking though, because that is an indicator of instability.
If legislation is passed to require that the length of copyright for a particular work is limited (and guaranteed) to the length at time of creation, I hope we at least rescind the extended terms that have been granted the last few rounds first. Like that would happen.
Well, that might be a good idea, but it makes no sense in our legal system. If Congress makes a law, they can backtrack, and they can even contradict themselves. This idea reminds me of the "Social Security Lockbox" that Gore spoke of. Well, let's say they passed that Lockbox law, and then later they passed a law to spend the money on pork instead of SS. Now what? The money is gone. The only thing that would really make sense is a law against the government, also known as a Constitutional Amendment.
Unfortunately it's out of style for the government to obey the Constitution, so that won't do much good either. Try reading the Second Amendment ("...shall not be infringed.") and then try reading some gun control legislation.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
What if someone publishes a work entitled something like "Soil Composition Around the World"? That would take a lot of effort and involve many people to test the soil everywhere. It would be very valuable to certain groups (miners or farmers or other people who cared about that) for a long time (how often does the soil change?). So, this work would not be ever created if copyright protection existed only 10 years, because there's no hope of recovering the investment.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
Suppose it wasn't YOUR novel, but your Grandfather's novel. Never published. But it has since passed the copyright expiration date.
Would it be illegal for the thief to PUBLISH it (under your Grandfather's name) once it had been stolen? Without your (his heir) permission?
Ok. So my grandfather pens the Great American Novel, and leaves it to me, unpublished. That's protected by copyright. Now when the copyright expires, it goes into the public domain. That's the letter of the law.
At the point that the copyright expires, nobody has any control over the work itself. The burglar would be allowed to publish the novel in the same way that he could publish any public domain material.
The only really tricky thing here is that the burglar stole the paper. He would be charged with theft in the sense of "hey! you stole my pad of paper!", regardless of what was written on it. Whether or not that would prevent his ability to publish the story or not, I couldn't say... Since the story would technically be in the public domain, I can't see anything stopping him from publishing it, unless there's some law I'm not aware of that states "you can't publish material that was written on paper that you stole from somebody, public domain or not"
My guess is that this is a poor example. Soil testing technology has been around for almost 100 years. Copyrights have been very long the entire time. World travel has been fairly cheap for about 30-50 years. They haven't written it yet. What more incentive could they need? They certainly have had enough time.
Most likely, soil does change over a decade-scale, making a book like this useful.
It would be better to point to an actually-published work which would not have been written if copyrights weren't absurdly long.