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New IFPI Boss Vows to Extend Recording Copyrights
JamesD_UK writes "John Kennedy, President and COO of Universal Music is to succeed Jay Berman as Chairman of the IFPI, the worldwide equivalent to the RIAA. Andrew Orlowski of The Register has written an article covering John Kennedy's views on copyright infringement and the public domain. Although Kennedy's thoughts on the former are predictable, he has vowed to fight hard to extend European recording copyrights past the current fifty year term. An extension of the European term to match the US would be particularly damaging to the public domain and efforts such as the Internet Archive as well as increasing the control that the recording industry holds over performers. For those interested, I run a small blog of articles regarding copyright recordings."
The combative former shipping lawyer will succeed Jay Berman as head of the lobby group the IPFI - the international version of the Recording Industry Ass. of America (RIAA) - and he defended both the the lawsuits and file poisoning at the In The City music conference in Manchester this week. (emphasis mine)
Coincidence on their choice of abbreviations? I think not.
He'd be more sympathetic to songwriters, he said, the day that record companies had "50 per cent margins". In fact, he claimed that record companies spend more on R&D than technology companies, because of the marketing spend required to create a hit [*]. The implication was clear: the success of an artist was down to the Shock and Awe bombing of the record company's marketing team, which is very expensive.
I can guarantee you a hit every time. Let me listen to the song. If the song sucks I'll tell you that. Then you can go and pay off every one of your little radio stations owned by ClearChannel and Inifinity (and various other conglomerates) and they can play the sucky song over and over again until people like it. If the song is good the artists should go on tour and make their own money as they have talent and they don't need your pay-offs.
"For 79p you've got a work of art that's like a Picasso, only one that's as close to the original as you can get," he said. [**]
To each their own on musical tastes but man, fucking Picasso is painting a gigantic brown-eye all over the inside of his grave after that comment.
Isn't there something the music purchasers can do to stop this asshole from taking over? Write letters, boycott, something?
n/t
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Most recordings that're > 50 years old are no longer profitable anyway, aren't they?
I mean, isn't the real cash cow in the new 'hit' stuff they're making with cookie cutters nowadays?
Is it actually worth their time and energy to be able to go back that far? I thought they'd go where the money is...
Perhaps I'm just misguided...
is the Register's commentary about this quote by Kennedy:
:)
"For 79p you've got a work of art that's like a Picasso, only one that's as close to the original as you can get," he said. [**]
the [**] equates to: Don't write to us - we'll find him a good earwax specialist.
Damn straight!
-- james
... Lee Harvey Oswald admits his mistake of popping the wrong John Kennedy.
It is in the best interests of the entertainment industry to extend copyrights. So before everyone gets their panties in a twist, remember that it's going to be this guy's job to improve the standard of living for executives in the recording industry.
Afterall, they're the ones signing their souls (and rights) away for promises of riches and fame. They don't deserve our pity, let alone our money.
Stop downloading their music, stop going to their concerts, and instead reward independent musicians for resisting the temptations of the RIAA etc.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
But he had even less sympathy for songwriters, who receive only a small fraction of royalties that recordings owners receive. that was fair, he insisted, as hits were down to investment in marketing, he said. At Polygram (which became Universal), Kennedy had stopped the practice of chart-fixing, he said, "because we were so bad at it. Songs that were supposed to chart at No.6 were coming in at No.34". Don't you love it when the people who run the music industry don't actually care about the people who MAKE music? And he said they stopped chart-fixing because they were bad at it?! He does think that it's WRONG to outright lie to the public to try to shove shitty music down their throats, he's just disappointed it didn't work as well as they thought it would. What a joke.
You don't want to click on them. Especially at work.
I hope I don't lose my job over this...
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
But record companies were still needed, he said, because "no unsigned band has been broken by the internet," he said. "Bands are screaming in space on the internet." Its really only a matter of time. And while no artist has become a "superstar" online yet, there are some artists who have built some rather large fanbases (see Mc Chris
If governments won't stop this trend, maybe competition can. If people come up with a licence that expires in, say, 15 years, and a trademark logo ("Sane copyright inside!"), and companies who wouldn't be impacted by this start using it, it might become popular. Then, people who care could exert direct competitive pressure against those who don't go along.
No, I don't think this will actually happen, but wouldn't it be cool?
The US copyrights are so long as to be laughable, and as just about all interesting copywritten stuff is released there wouldn't it be a largely phyrric victory to achieve longer copyrights in the rest of the world?
"as well as increasing the control that the recording industry holds over performers."
I'm not shedding a tear. People act as if labels are the only way to do things. Don't want to sign with Universal? Don't. Publish on your own. Don't use the labels. You still have a choice.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
awww are you mad that you are modded -1 and he's +4? awww. poor troll. awww. poor troll.
Exclusive licences should be limited to 5 years and carry an obligation to publish; if a licencee fails to publish they should lose their rights without compensation.
>>>>truth; beauty; unix.<<<<
this next generation of kids doesn't give a damn about these international and national regulations bodies. p2p is part of the way of life. get over it. start making good music and touring. guaranteed to pay off.
GetTheJob.com : Nothing but Real Jobs.
An interesting sidenote is this: remember when copying a chord (dunno how many notes that was) of song was considered infringement? I wonder what would happen if someone went out and made a pseudosong with every possible combination of a chord. Then they could sue every new song as being "infringing." The whole notion is ridiculous
If one day the RIAA et al would get a clue and realize that it's thier pricing that is totally out of whack? I would start buying music again if CDs were 5 bucks. And no I don't download music. I rip my friends CDs when I'm at thier houses.
awww. are you mad that he's made you cut yourself again once your pathetic meaningless life got exposed. awww. poor garcia. awww. poor garcia.
Do we need any more proof as to why the music industry is in the dumps?! The top dog of the music industry cannot distinguish between a good song or a bad song. He appears to believe that any succession of notes could be a hit merely by marketing.
I hear people say again and again that they buy less music because music sucks today. (At least the crap pushed by the industry.) Now we have evidence to back that up.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Well, I already wrote this a couple of hours ago and it seems pertinent to this discussion. Posted AC to deflect Karma-related accusations :)
Emperor Palpatine, is that you?
Every one of these industry moguls wants to be the Emperor of the Universe. They hate the way things are now, think they have the answers, and they want the power and the money.
The great thing is, just like in Star Wars, *we're
letting them do it*.
Don't like it? Join the rebellion now. I made a vow not to buy any more big RIAA-approved CDs until the insanity stopped, and I haven't. Used and indie CDs? No problem. But it takes more than that (they just blame it on piracy). Write your government representatives (ussuming you live somewhere you have representation). Refuse to support the Empire. There's lots we can do.
Seriously, that's a real question. There's a really good round-table discussion in this month's Playboy about the music industry and how they're running themselves into the ground with this crap. Most everybody - except for the RIAA dick - seems certain that the record industry's days (as we know it) are numbered.
Why do copyrights need to be longer than 50 years? Not everything is Mickey Mouse... I mean, in 50 years, is Brittany Spears going to be relevant to anyone other than her grandkids?
Copyrights hinder things from becoming 'common' in our culture, and life becomes bland. Imagine if noone knew the words to 'happy birthday' or common Christmas carols...
-db
A thought just occurred to me: why do corporations take ownership of employee's copyrights instead of taking limited exclusive license? It's the employees doing the creating. Why not make Disney pay employees and former employees for continuations of exclusive license, until the copyright formally expires?
Regardless, copyright terms are getting too long. The great masters of 20th century classical music, for example, would gain much greater appreciation if their sheet music were affordable and not artificially jacked up in price by someone who really has no claim to the work.
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
For a primer of anti copyright arguments, I attack some of the main arguments on my web page, see ....
Bitter Protest Against Copyrights
There used to be a pretty tried and true idea, that people are willing to pay for what they get. It's not true universally, but it's relatively speaking, pretty true.
I still, suprisingly buy music. I do too, also pirate some, but they are deleted in short order. It's the nature of the industry nowadays -- most artists know they won't last longer than a few years and the goal is to get every penny they can. Look at Metallica, now winding down their career (because it was downhill anyway) -- they started out singing against the 'man', 'halls of justice painted green, money talkin', and then use the same method they preached against to get damages awarded because they don't want to tour as much and have real shitty music they now sell.
But I digress... the music industry can't demand money for what people don't want to pay. Everybody now knows it doesn't cost $15 to make and package a CD, especially with the explosion in technology and the price cuts it has brought for the creation and distribution of everything. When a CD costs pennies to make and distribute, all you are saying is that, when customers don't want to pay the money to buy a CD with 1 good song on it, and further, don't want to pay $1 for a single song because it's missing a 'hard' copy and isn't really a discount well... you are being stubborn and you are going to get nailed. And the industry is getting nailed, by piraters everywhere. If music labels started doing a 'LaunchCast' type service (which I *love*), then all would be well. You subscribe monthly for say, $10.00, and people download and listen to all the music they want.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
I've read-up on all the Lessig arguments and I think he's done a good job of understanding and explaining the mechanics of how overzealous copyright law can hinder the development of derivatives. But I have to disagree with his conclusions.
Lessig's arguments, in a nutshell, are that because of draconian copyright law, the culture we would expect to see developing around protected works is not developing.
Maybe he's right, but maybe who cares?
It seems to me that the actions of the RIAA and friends will primarily result in the next generation developing it's own non-derivative culture, and with it, a derivative culture based on it.
Here's one example: the fastest growing software culture right now is not the proprietary software culture where everything is fairly adequately protected, but the free software culture where sharing and derivations are king.
Or consider this: The BBC is investigating the possibility of opening their archives to the world, placing them on the Internet, and allowing anyone who cares to create their own derivative works. If this happens, is there any doube that the next geveration of American kids will enjoy a culture of Dr. Who remakes, and be scarcely familiar with the culture of Friends and (God forbid) it's remakes?
The culture will grow wherever the culture is allowed to grow.
There's plenty of music out there on the internet which the RIAA can't complain about you downloading because the artist has already authorized it. (I don't want to bias anyone, so I won't post links here, but I'll invite replies and follow-up to post their favorite sites.)
What would happen if the onling music sharing community were to declare January, 2005 as Free Music Only month and take a pledge to refuse to offer, download, or purchase any music which isn't Free To Share for 31 days. Would the RIAA notice if all priacy stopped? Would they modify their prices or policies to compensate for the sudden reduction in the behavior they are soo keen to stop?
Would the industry ever recover from the loss of customers to the Free Music culture.
I submit that we don't have to build our culture on top of the one created by the RIAA; that the culture we have created for ourselves is really quite good, and certaintly adequate for our needs.
I'd say let the RIAA keep their worn-out cookie-cutter tunes. Let the culture they created die by their own silly overly-protective rules.
Wouldn't that be ironic; the RIAA, faced with the prospect that their primary market just doesn't care anymore, pleading to reduce copyright terms just so that future genrations will bother to remember them at all?
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
I hate taxes.
.5% tax on Mickey Mouse bring into the government till?
However, since corporations seem to think that once something is created they should own it forever, make them subject to the same taxes everyone has to pay - if intellectual property is truly property, treat it as such.
In other words, we must all pay taxes if we own real property - it's called the property tax. If you own a vacant lot, you must pay tax every year on it, whether you use it or not.
I hate that. I think it's stupid. I think once you own a piece of real estate, you should own it forever. However, that is the way the world is.
Let's extend it. The MPAA, RIAA & company pretty much have Congress and the Supreme Court bought off one way or another. It's pretty clear we can't fight them directly. So, let's start a campaign to collect intellectual property tax. Force companies to register and maintain title to created works. Give them a twenty year window, from time of first publication, to own the IP free and clear of tax. After twenty years, charge 'em tax if they don't relinquish the copyright to the public domain.
It's drastic. It's yet another stupid tax. On the other hand, it's a potentially huge source of revenue and a way of bypassing the lobbyists and hacks who prevent enforcement of the LIMITED copyrights mentioned in the Constitution. Go to a politician and tell them that the campaign contributions they take in from the copyright holders can't match the goodwill generated by bringing home the pork money that this tax will bring in.
How much will a
Let's do it. Anyone want to work with me to make it happen? It'd be difficult - copyright is usually a Federal issue, but there must be a way to get something done at the state level. Send me email if you're interested.
I'm a conservative Republican. The idea of working to create a new type of tax is hateful to me. Unfortunately, I must conclude the idea of turn the right to think and create freely over to corporations is even more hateful.
-Steve Calabrese
They seem to have no conception of a need to foster public good will, which is just bizarre for a corporate entity. Whenever I think about things like steamboat willy, I just can't help but wonder why Disney didn't release those really old cartoons just to keep old fans happy. Yes, they would lose out on a small amount of revenue, but a company that "gives back" gets a good reputation that can make its future offerings more attractive since it adds a more human face to an otherwise faceless entity.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
You mean something just like this?
O'Reilly has released a number of titles under this arrangement.
DNA just wants to be free...
The end result is one website where you can download movies/music/books/videogames/tvshows/etc.
Then the public will use it instead of watching TV.
It will also be organized so you can see media that's associated and similar to what you just watched. But really complex logic to make it work.
I go more into it on my website:
www.geocities.com/James_Sager_PA
I've even heard arguments that the Bible shouldn't be placed online because men own the 'translation'. What they don't realize is that its God's property, not man's. Probably have it online within a year or so.
God spoke to me.
From umusic.com's "about the company" page:
Press Contacts
United States: Peter LoFrumento (mailto:Communications@Umusic.com)
United Kingdom: Adam White (mailto:Communications2@Umusic.com)
I think that I will write FAO their boss and state that extending copyrights will stifle innovation. The real talents of the music industry are playing, unknown, in local pubs, and the model that his business has been using is out of date for the technology it is sitting on -- the extension of UK copyright laws to 95 years from creation is only a money-making scam -- and so they will have to find another way to do business.
Lawyers and politicians aren't musicians, don't contribute more than protecting the innocent and chooing how large their slice of the pie is.
A boycott will be offered.
Take care.
Ken.
The Recording Industries keep mentioning how much money that they have to spend to market their music... Well, let me explain why. If you play a crappy song for me and then ask me if I like it, I'll say no. And if you play a crappy song for me 1000 times, I'll still say I don't like it. BUT..., if you pay people that I or my peers respect to say that they like it and then play it 1000 times, I will LIE and say that I like it.
That is part of their problem, they need to get the songs that people like without any payola. That is what I thought they used to do. That is why so many artists never make it to "big time".
I say, no one buy a damn thing from them because no one really likes their music anyways
like taking quizes, take them for money
This is completely false. This is not a sig.
The recent changes to US copyright were supposedly to conform to the European standards. Now the Euros are supposedly needing to conform to the US standards. Clearly, the intent is to ratchet the period forward inexorably until copyright is effectively perpetual. I had hopes that the US Supreme Court was going to put a stop to this insanity, but noooooo.
oh, er, have you not seen the christian holy book at http://bible.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible
(in no way am i advocating or detracting from the use of this resource: just pointing out its there.)
take care.
ken.
would be that after a certain time period, the artists get 100% of the royalties. I'm sure these companies would be so happy with that.
Sorry, John Kennedy(TM) is already used.
What a blatant copyright violation by John Kennedy's parents!
When will all this stop?
Will it ever lead to a day when we would finally have the MCXCIII compilation of Britney Spears FOREVER and on the case instead of showing a busty Britney, it just shows a mound of dust.
That's what Britney would be in say.. 70 years, the way they keep extending these God damned copyrights.
So what if they spent 10 billion dollars to market that bitch? Other industries (like drug firms/whatever) spent a lot to develop products too, they don't get protection as ridiculous as these (thankfully)
Of course, we can go on and on about boycotting them, but as long as Joe Average doesn't know (or care) about what is happening, it won't even make a dent on the RIAA.
So long "the land of the free", let's all migrate to Nigeria!
http://www.migrate-nigeria.com/
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
These people have no understanding of music as art. They probably listen only to their own fixed charts ("what do you mean my taste in music sucks, this was supposed to be number 1!"). Pity them.
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
This is all a stupid game of Leapfrog, taking us all as suckers for a ride. To wit:
1: Increase copyright lengths in the USA.
2: Claim Europe is out of step "with the world" because their copyrights are only 50 years now, instead of life + 75.
3: Increase European copyrights to exceed the "world standard".
4: Claim the USA is now "out of step with the world" because their copyrights aren't as long as the Eurpoean standard.
5: Demand increasing USA copyright terms to exceed European copyrights.
6: PROFIT!!!
7: Goto #1.
I believe whatever copyright existed when a work was created and released to the public should remain in force for that work, and expire on schedule. Clearly that copyright was sufficient to insprie the creation of that work at the time, which is the stated purpose of all copyrights!
You know, the more things get unfair, the less I'm worried about "stealing" music over the Internet. I would not take physical product from a store, but that's a very different thing.
HOWEVER, the music industry has very little to worry about from me because frankly just about nothing today is worth listening to.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Songwriters have to eat and raise children just like the rest of us working stiffs. Very few of them get rich and famous.
Many ad agencies, when making a commercial for TV, use music that has not been cleared. When the commercial is ready for production, they have someone record a 'similar' version with different chords or a melody that differs only slightly - enough that it is considered a separate work, and no license is required. Clearing copyright for movies is similar - a license for distribution in a movie is subject to contracts as long as your leg and the price is shooting ever higher.
I predict that the music industry will move to have the mood and 'feel' of a song copyrighted. Just think of the money to be made by copyrighting a genre or production style of music! If the music industry can copyright the 'feel' or production style of a song, they will have what they always wanted - absolute control over who makes and distributes music. Independent songwriters who write a song that has a similar style to the Beatles 'Blackbird' will have to clear the copyright on that 'style'. Bands will be prevented from writing or performing 'a song that sounds like Led Zepplin'.
Yes, it sounds far fetched, yes, it is fraught with loopholes, opinion, and subjectiveness.
But it would make them rich, and it would make them all-powerful.
Watch for it.
I'm Spartacus!
In all seriousness, I think this is a pretty good idea.
When are people going to realize that the extending copyrights, enhancing patent coverage, or any other games being played by IP monopolists are done at the direct cost of reducing the rights of individual people. That's right, it means taking something that you had as a right and giving it to a corporation. At one time this was justified by the belief that it would provide incentive to create new products and services. As we are seeing more and more, the effect now is to stifle innovation and keep it under control of large corporations so that they may maintain ecomonic power.
"increasing the control that the recording industry holds over performers. " - sums up the other aspect. Musicians have histroically been at the bottom of the heap. In the good old days we'd summon the darkies up to the big house to play the fiddle while we sipped our mint julips and if they were good enough, we might toss them a chicken wing or even a drumstick. If not, they would starve a bit. This was clearly the kind of "merit system" to which people of this ilk wish us to return. After all, why are musicians pursuing the dollar when their only goal should be the love of music. Doesn't compensation only corrupt their work?
There is not nearly enough love in the world, but there is far too much trust.
And extend it to patents as well. Anyone ever read "Distraction"?
Who the hell wants to touch Britney even after 15 yrs from now?
We should be glad (but not too glad) that the music industry always appoints their most aggressive attack dog lawyers to the most public positions of their trade groups. These people can always be counted on to make over-the-top mean and stupid statements that makes our point for us that these people are greedy pigs.
If the music industry were smart (no worries there, so relax) they would get Janis Ian or Don Henley to head their trade organizations. That would make it easy for them to portray us as greedy freaks, and themselves as considerate and reasonable.
This guy, John Kennedy, has been taking so much shit about his name for the past fifty years that it's no wonder that he's such a twisted little junkyard dog!
As long as copyright makes money, the lobbying will go on and more and more terrible laws will be made.
Break Copyright! Destroy copyright profits!
Get rid of your iTunes habit. Don't go to movie theaters. Download as hard you can and make an FTP server for your friends. Distribute DVD-R's full of MP3s to your workmates. Explain your teenage sister how to get stuff from binary newsgroups. Install emule for your grandma.
You can cost the **AA thousands of dollars in revenues with very little risk to yourself. Let them learn the hard way.
Somebody go mod down nursedave's last couple of posts, for posting this shit offtopic. Hey dave, next time you're going to troll AC, leave off your username!
Whoops, do I have to pay royalties on that? (Pink Floyd please forgive me). It's a small world after all, at least the corporations want it that way so they can control it. Whoops, more royalties.
Global multi-national corporations simply don't want governments to defend the people, the corporations want the governments of the world to defend the corporations. If you don't become part of the machine, then you are screwed.
It's all about power, not money. Money simply gives you power. If there was some other form of exchange then everybody would want that. Say, memory chips. Big Mac for three 256K DIPs. Then everybody would want memory chips.
5,000 DDR 400MHZ DIMMs for a Ferrrari?
When recent copyright legislation in this country passed extending copyrights to longer than 100 years I recall one of the battle cries of the RIAA was that the United States needed to harmonize their copyright terms with those in Europe. Turns out we gave longer terms than Europe, and now they want to harmonize with ours. I'll bet after Europe has finished harmonizing their copyright terms with ours in this round we'll have to lengthen ours again to harmonize with theirs.
Why not simply have a tax that starts off at one cent the first year and then doubles each year after? There might be a SMALL grace period to help out the little guy-- perhaps 5 years for the individual, none for a corporate holder. And specifically, there will be NO CAP to the scale. This is by design.
Even sans the grace period, anyone should be able to afford the copyright for the first 10 years, since at 10 years it will be 1024 cents or $10.24. Of course, it doubles each year. But this is very much in the "limited time" duration that the Framers had in mind.
Each year, a copyright holder will have to decide: Is it worth my money to keep an exclusive privilege another year, or should I relinquish the copyright to the public domain? Exclusive rights could be kept for profitable works for longer periods of time. Even a 20-year copyright, which costs 2^20, or $10485.76, is pretty cheap for a company if the work is actually valuable enough. This system is adaptive to both the interest of the copyright holder (since some copyrights for valuable items can still be kept) as well as the public domain (since it gets more and more expensive each year to maintain exclusive rights, eventually the work WILL fall in the public domain.)
Naturally, a copyright transfer does not reset the copyright cost (otherwise, a company can trade a copyright from subsidiary A to subsidiary B and back and never go up the scale.)
Cheers!
I made a calculation foible in my own post...
The copyright for the 10th year (alone) would be $10.24, but of course the holder would have paid the first 9 years of copyright. But the total cost of all of this is still only $20.47, still very afforable.
Cheers!
About stuff already placed in the PD? Like in Germany, there are all sorts of Elvis compilations coming out. 50 years folks and you could do what you like with it.
So what would they do? Roll back this stuff or simply extend it ala Disney - the other branch of government.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
"Ich bin ein asshat."
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Start it from when it was published.
Exactly as it is now.
Duh.
I saw we just kill the whole lot. If the world woke up one day and found the most aggressive 10-12 record industry big shots had all been murdered in the night, well, it wouldn't care, but bigshots 13-24 would tread much more lightly.
A little OT but you must love land covenants then, huh? That one has always killed me. I own this land, but must follow a bunch of stupid, usually dated & arbitray rules. Like no sheds or no clotheslines or no watering your lawn on the third thursday of the month. I've read the one that came with my house and wouldn't think twice about breaking it if I wanted to. If I bought the land, and want to paint my grass purple, then screw you I'll do as I please with my property. I can't help but wonder if they're enforcable anyway. The old farmer who created it when he developed the land has been dead & burried for years anyway.
Vote Quimby.
If I create something on my own that happens to be exactly the same as something you previously created, I should be in the clear as long as I had no knowledge of your work. This is hard to prove though.
Darn right it's hard to prove, especially given the pervasiveness of commercial FM radio and retail stores' background music, and the situation is scaring at least some people, such as the author of this essay away from songwriting.
Sure, Snopes seems to think "Happy Birthday to You" is still copyrighted and owned by Time Warner. But it may not be different enough from an earlier song called "Good Morning to All", whose U.S. copyright has already expired, to be considered a distinct work worthy of a separate copyright.
So say we abolish copyright. What then?
At least songwriters wouldn't have to worry about subconscious plagiarism lawsuits.
The number of creative works, good or bad, would trickle to a crawl. How many people contribute to GPL software because of the assurance provided by the license that their work won't be taken and sold back to them?
On the other hand, how many people contribute to permissively licensed software such as the BSD operating systems and various data compression libraries such as libpng and libvorbis?
We'd be like Hong Kong, where bootleggers make it almost impossible for acts to make any money whatsoever by selling copies of cds for $1.
Well at least some musicians would be able to make a living from the over-21 crowd, who will pay for live performance of a musical work.
Just think of the money to be made by copyrighting a genre or production style of music!
Methods for producing musical works and sound recordings are not copyrightable in the United States. 17 USC 102(b). They may be patentable, but those last only 20 years provided that Cher doesn't get in bed with drug companies.
Musicians and songwriters create something out of thin air
Not in a vacuum. All authors create based on shared cultural conventions of the medium, such as the rules of the English language, or 4/4 time and 12 semitones to the octave in the case of songwriters following Western popular musical tradition. A problem arises when big publishers try to take control of the creation of music by copyrighting just about everything combinatorically possible in these conventions.
Problem is, what you've just said is derivative, too. We don't come up with ideas in a vacuum. "If I have seen further than other men, it is because I stand on the backs of giants," remember that quote?
That said, you can really tell when someone comes up with a great new idea--I remember thinking "wow" when Gmail came out (and no, not just about the 1GB bit)--but even there, you have to recognize all the derivative things it was built on (it's not like they invented email as well).
You may notice how quickly the "new" wears off, too--the Matrix was all new to us, and very exciting. The two movies after it quickly became old hat.
Sad thing is, with all these crazy intellectual "property" restrictions, we may well deny ourselves those innovations built on the peaks of current progress, as well as the valleys of redundant crap.
The solution to the dam breaking is to let some of the water through.
-theed
Short story by Spider Robinson on the evolution of copyright as regards artistic endeavors.
Anthologised in "By Any Other Name". ( ISBN 0-671-31976-4 )
An excellent cautionary tale on the perils of extending copyrights.
-Rollgunner
The music industry, with their firm control on the congress, will.
The next election no longer has meaning, either side with choose will result in the death of democracy.
May it be King George or King John, the multi-national corporation will make the government their puppet, and its citizens their slave.
This may seem harsh, but bear with me.
Terrorists have won on September 11. They've blinded us to the evil that's poisoning our society. For two years we've been hell bent on killing the monsters, but have ignore the very evil lurking in our society.
The Bill of Rights is no longer the holy grail of democracy. But merely guarantee corporations "The Right to Profit".
But all I know, here, now, is that what I said here no longer matters. Because despite the many intellectual frequenting this site, none has the power to change the falling bomb on our nation.
Just like Japan, who can't stop the two atom bombs.
All we can hope is a catastrophe. A disaster so great that it shatters our poisoned society. And from its ashes, we may be able to build a true nation by the people, for the people, of the people.
Or else, we're doomed to become merely a page in history, forgotten by all in the ages to come.
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
Coolest site I've found in years
Even if he dies the copyright still lasts for 5 to 10 years... the grandparent's way has nothing to do with the author's life. Just make sure his descendents have the ability to publish the work and profit from it.