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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?
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?
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.<<<<
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
Copyright was put in place from the point of view that if you don't have copyright, you'll get people just ripping off your work and therefore, people won't create. That's very reasonable.
But, 50 years is quite long enough for a person, but then this is more about corporations, not people. Copyright was not created in a time of giants of publishing. When copyright first arrived, it was more about individual creative people, for whom a copyright of even 20 years would grant them sufficient income.
If you record something age 18 and have 50 years, that means it expires when you are 68.
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.
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
No, they are. At least the stuff that has lived on to become part of our culture.
These de facto infinite copyrights that we have now will enable the entertainment industry to charge over and over again for music and movies that should be in the public domain.
You can be guaranteed that if a new physical format for distributing music (the successor to the CD or whatever) takes hold, the record companies will re-release old Elvis and Beatles albums in this format (among plenty of others). They'll probably release them as "commemorative editions" and charge up the wazoo for them as well.
With how things are now, some record company executives who weren't even born yet when the Beatles were creating music will continue to get rich off of their work, even after the remaining two are long dead and buried.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
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.
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.
I do.
www.iuma.com
www.magnatune.com
the ONLY new music I have bought over the past 12 months has been from artist on those sties.
RIAA artists I like? I buy only USED cd's.
buying Used CD's is the best way of kicking the RIAA and those that love them in the nuts.
Buy Used CD's only if it is not an Indie artist.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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.
Mickey Mouse is a bad example, since he's a trademark.
His older movies are copyright, and should be public domain by now, but noone but Disney would ever be able to use the image of Mickey Mouse in any derivative work.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Nope. Copyrights should be good for the lifetime of the artist who creates the work, and requires a specific delcaration of assignment of rights to allow a corporation to make use of that copyright for the lifetime of the artist, or some shorter period of time, with the rights reverting to the artist.
An artist who would like their works to be made publicly available over the internet would have to publish a list specifying what works are available.
Yes, there will still be problems, copyright violators, and even people who will insist it is their right to make copies of any and all possible works, regardless of the copyright holder's opinion.
-Rusty
You never know...
Hmm. you may have just hit something important. A lot of it is to do with presentation of particular kinds of music as "cool". People, especially youngsters are herd animals often without a well formed taste of their own. thus they are vulnerable to this pressure. It would be fascinating to know what people would like if they were brought up in a vacuum, with access to all music, but never hearing anyone else's opinion on music. i know it's impossible, but i bet a lot of what's now independant/alternative music would be more popular. you'd probably have more melodic pop and less hip-hop aswell - ? not saying that's necessarily a good thing.
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
The same way I can get Night of the Living Dead on DVD, even though it's legal to download it from the public domain. If you can get it, it's legal. That doesn't mean a record company is obligated to give you a copy on physical media for free, and a lot of people still value physical media, for some reason... :(
The same way that book publishers can still make money from things like this.
The problem is that, like so many other things, music runs right up into a fundamental problem with capitalism.
Part of the idea of capitalism is that people should buy the products that generate the most value for them. But with music, that's paradoxical, because until you've heard a song you don't know how much you like it; and once you have heard it, you've already consumed entertainment value from it.
If someone was brought up in a vacuum, they'd try randomly until they hit on an artist they like and then just keep buying stuff by that artist - no point taking risks with their money. Yet if they get info from anywhere else, payola comes in.
On the other hand they borrowed from Carlo Collodi to make Pinocchio. And they made Pinocchio in 1940, the year after Carlo Collodi's Copyright ran out. He died in 1890, just 50 years before. Strange, isn't it? ;)
Disney played very well on the copyright instrument, grabbing everything as soon as it was free of charge and put their own version in place, for which the copyright should never ever expire.
Patents last for twenty years. They used to last only seventeen years. Why is this acceptable for patents but not for copyrights?
I mean, I know why -- but is this unreasonable from anyone's viewpoint who doesn't charge $13.99 for a CD?
Tenemus pyrobolos atqui jacimus cognitiones.