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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."
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...
... 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.
the man is so far off base from a normal human being I'm wondering if he's not the RIAA's Manchurian Candidate:
The UMG boss had little sympathy for the twelve-year-old girl in a New York housing project who had harbored an MP3 of the theme tune to her favorite show on her computer, and had been sued by the RIAA. Her family paid out thousands of dollars in a settlement. She was a "serious file sharer", insisted Kennedy.
The first step in beating these pricks is to get Congress's hands out of their pockets. Until that happens, people like this will be put in positions of power where he can continue to go after the little 12-y-o criminals.
-- james
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.
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