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.
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?
And Elvis and the record companies knew it 50 years ago, when they were making the music in the first place.
>> 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.
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
...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?
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
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?
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.
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.
1) A translation will not change the copyright of the original work. The publisher of a new translation has no rights to the original, or any other translations, only the new work.
2) Quality of the media has nothing to do with the copyright.
3) There are actually two copyrights involved with music, the song itself, and the recording of that song. That's why you'll usually see a (P) and a (C) on recordings.
"Was it a millionaire who said 'Imagine No Posessions?'" -- Elvis Costello
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
"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. --
Funny comparison, I would have pegged the Stripes minimalist two piece rock as seeming more in place fifty years ago than today. Of course, fifty years from now people will cherry pick all the good stuff out and make this look like a golden age of music as well.
One god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
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!
... 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.
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...
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.
Er, yeah, so UK citizens are subject to US law now? Sorry, doesn't work that way. If a country decides copyright doesn't even exist within its borders, then it doesn't. US law can't dictate what other countries do, no matter how much they wish it could.
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.
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
Because nobody can trust the period of copyright not to change.
You, the author, created a work in the 60's or whatever. Society granted you, clearly and under no uncertain terms, copyright over that work for say 50 years. You understood that 50 years later, your work would lose all copyright protections, and fall into the public domain.
Society at large understood this too... and *expects* that work to fall into the public domain on the required date.
If we are going to keep retroactively changing copyright periods, why bother putting a limit on it at all?
Just because it has economic value to the owner does not mean it should continue to be protected.. the owner should work on NEW stuff, not continue to sit on the old.
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)
"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?
...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?
This is the problem when you view copyrights from the perspective taught in business school.
First of all, copyright covers the right to control the distribution of your work. Songs, books, movies, etc are not a "property" and as such are dealt with by a different set of laws. Unfortunately business folks like to talk about "Intellectual Property", but there really is no such thing.
Copyrights quite simply are an agreement made between a government and an individual to allow that individual a time limited monopoly on distributing his work. When the limit is reached, the work falls into the public domain.
Copyright is a mechanism who's original purpose was to encourage creativity. The limited time monopoly allowed creators to profit from their works rather than others, but another reason for the limit in time IS TO ENCOURAGE TO CREATE AGAIN. Yet people have twisted this into something it was not intended to be. It was not meant to be a permanent source of income for the life of the author, it wasn't meant to be a right that could be passed on via inheritance for x number of generations to benefit from, nor was it meant for companies like Disney to remain the sole entity to be able to use those works forever.
Looking at it from a few feet back from an economic perspective, what do you think would generate greater economic benefit? One company profiting off from a work indefinitely, or a 1000 companies all being able to profit from that work?
That's why there is a (supposed) limit on the term of copyright. At some point that work needs to fall into the public domain so that the work may profit all of society and not just one person or company. And by profit, I don't mean just monetarily.
Your argument, that if an author would not create a work it would have never existed, is as lame as Jack Valenti's argument that all creative works need proprietary ownership to be preserved. It can be argued that if you did not build up on existing culture, you would have never created your work in the first place. So, you get from public almost fair trade to start with. However, public recognizes necessity to compensate authors, inventors and the like fairly in order to encourage this type of activity. And this is where 'mental property' rights are coming from.
Unfortunately, for practical reasons, monetary value of creative works which are subject of copyright and patent laws may not be easily evaluated. This is the only reason for the 'limited monopoly' bargain, otherwise, public would fairly compensate an author, allienate his/her work and leave to him/her only the honorary attribution.
Thomas Jefferson conceived that 14 years of monopoly is enough for an author to try to profit from their works. And this is under late XVIII- early XIX centuries means of of communication in the United States. In XXI century, when RIAA posesses means of promotion and distribution far beyond XVIII-XIX centuries authors' wildest dreams copyrights should be shorter . And corporate copyrights should be even shorter still.
Since the copyright law arises from the rights the public granted to the authors or their proxies on the condition of fair balance,
the first thing is that the period of a work's copyright protection must be the one, when the work was made accessible to public, because that was a contract at that time and an author knew the terms and still decided to publish. It must not be retroactively extended. This will create fair stability for both the public and the vested interests.
Second, term 'limited times' must be taken not literally but rather practically. It is just unacceptable that 3 generations of the mankind are and being deprived from the rights the previous generations used to have.
Third, pigopolies akin Disney Corporation, RIAA, MPAA, Clear Channel, etc. are unacceptable and must be outlawed as a matter of bargain or, at least, their rights (copy and otherwise) must be adjusted to reflect their ever increasing ability to promote and dissiminate creative works, in order to keep the balance fair.
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.
The question is really: who is harmed if they do make a copy? If you're alive, and they make a copy, you can argue that you're harmed because maybe you wanted to sell it, or maybe it had some secret that would be damaging to you if it got into the public or a ton of other reasons. If you're dead, there's no 'you' to be harmed by their actions. They could copy it a million times, destroy it, use it as a coaster for drinks, and none of those actions could possibly have any effect on you (since theres no longer a you to affect).
The way I see it is, you have a right to do anything, as long as that doesn't interfere with the rights of others. If the author is still alive, and you believer that creators have the right to control distribution of what they produce, then it's reasonable to say that someone making a copy without their permission is an immoral act. But if the author is dead, it's no longer possible to interfere with their rights, or at least no more than you could interfere with the rights of a piece of rock or other inanimate objects.
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.
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.
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.