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Extending Pop Music Copyrights

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the but-of-course dept.

InklingBooks writes "According to TimesOnLine, the UK is considering doubling the copyright term for popular music to 100 years. That means the Beatles' "Love Me Do" and "Please Please Me," scheduled to to go into the public domain in 2013, would earn royalties for record companies until 2063."

13 of 709 comments (clear)

  1. Can we just tax copyright already? by QuantumG · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why is it that people have to pay land taxes but they don't have to pay copyright taxes? If you own land you are required to pay a tax on it because the state spends a heck of a lot of public resources on protecting that land for you. The same goes for copyright (especially now that copyright violation has become a criminal act in some countries) so why don't the copyright holders have to pay a tax?

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
    1. Re:Can we just tax copyright already? by hey! · · Score: 5, Interesting

      For if you ever wrote a poem you'd have to pay for it, which sounds just crap.

      Well, not necessarily. Nobody's interested in anything you haven't published. Once it is published, it irretrievably becomes part of the public consciousness. You are asking the public to do something very unnatural, which is not to use information that you've deliberately put in their heads. So, I think it is fair that copyright tax should be designed to kick in after publishing.

      Actually, I'd like to do it like this: You are taxed on your copyright based on 1% of your peak annual revenues for a work. If you haven't published, that would be zero. Suppose you made a million dollars this year, your tax would be ten thousand dollars, hardly an amount that would be an economic distortion. Now suppose your million dollar seller isn't selling anymore, and you decide to take it out of print. Then you'd have to decide whether it was worth it to you to keep paying the annual ten grand or to let the work go public domain. If you were planning a sequel, of course you'd pay. If you were just cussed about it, then you'd probably still pay, but the amount you pay would be roughly based on how much money you've made in the past, and the proven potential of your work (and derivative works) to generate revenue.

      There are two reasons I like this way of doing things. First, if you publish some obscure literary work aimed at a small number of people, you aren't asking much of the public not to use your work, so you don't pay much. It scales the benefits and costs of copyright fairly. Secondly, I imagine huge companies with vast libraries of IP would be forced to evaluate that IP and decide whether they're going to do anything with it. Right now they can just leave the creative work of prior generations rotting ina vault somewhere without ever thinking about it. They'll either decide to rerelease it, build some kind of derivative work on it, or let it go into the public domain. Disney can still keep the copyright to Mickey Mouse if they have a sufficiently profitable use for it.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  2. Because... by JimDabell · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...everyone knows that unless the Beatles continue to make money from recordings made fifty years ago, they'll have to quit music and get day jobs. Then society won't get any new Beatles music, and then where will we be?

    It seems to me that copyrights are turning from a temporary privilege into an actual property right, despite all indications that only a self-interested minority of our society wants that. So when are copyright holders going to pay property tax on their holdings?

    1. Re:Because... by Professor_UNIX · · Score: 5, Interesting
      ..everyone knows that unless the Beatles continue to make money from recordings made fifty years ago, they'll have to quit music and get day jobs. Then society won't get any new Beatles music, and then where will we be?

      Yea, this is one area where I think we've gone totally wrong. Copyright should last at most 10-20 years. Works that persist longer in the spotlight become more a part of the culture than a creation of the artist. For example, I doubt many people here know who actually wrote the "Happy Birthday" song, but everyone knows it, everyone sings it at a birthday party, and yet it's still under copyright.

      Imagine a society where an orchestra couldn't play any classical music without acquiring the rights to that performance from a copyright holder that has been passed down through the centuries by inane copyright law and they end up paying a large amount of money for you to enjoy their performance. When a work of art persists for decades in the hearts and minds of a large group of people it becomes part of our unique culture and our government has the obligation to help protect that cultural identity IMHO.

      As an artist there seems to be two camps, those who do it for the money and those who do it for the art. For the latter I would imagine they enjoy making money off something they love as a side effect, but if they couldn't sell a single song or book I'm sure they'd continue writing or singing. For the former group they'll wither away and leave us with less bubble gum pop bands, manufactured grunge groups, and corporate "gangsta" rappers, but in the end our cultural identity will thrive as a result. We'd be cutting out the crap and keeping the true art made by people who love their work for the sake of making it and not for the money it brings them... I guess it'd result in a situation like we have with open source programmers in the end.

      Aw screw it, I guess I'm sounding like a big old commie now, but I had to get that off my chest. The fact that Mickey Mouse is still under the iron thumb of Walt Disney Corporation so long after Walt's death just annoys the hell out of me.

  3. Pure Genius by Linker3000 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That changes everything - it'll stop illegal downloading at a stroke!

    --
    AT&ROFLMAO
  4. Misplaced priorities by otter42 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Bands like Coldplay will make enough money for their company to help them discover around 50 or 100 bands."

    Excuse me? EXCUSE ME??? The point of a band is to make money for its label???

    What about the label paying its bands living wages? Or does that just not count?

    What about using the internet to develop and promote new bands? That doesn't count either?

    Thank god I live in France where my right to download CDs and movies is now protected by "activist judges".

    --
    www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
  5. Why retroactive? by RPoet · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why must copyright extensions always be retroactive? Are we afrad that The Beatles won't write Love Me Do in 1963 if he didn't expect royalties for a hundred years? Wait, that doesn't even make sense. The copyright deal back then was given, and works were created as intended; the incentive worked. So why would we need to give a guy in 1963 more incentive to create?

    --
    "Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
  6. What the? by bobintetley · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I am FUCKING furious.

    If this goes into force, anything you hear today is unlikely to be returned to the public domain within the lifetime of your GRANDCHILDREN. This is completely fucking unacceptable.

    Copyright is already 30 years too long. These media cartels have stolen our public domain and culture, and are renting it back to us in perpetuity.

    I'm off to write to my MP.

    GRRRRRR

  7. What The Fuck Is The Justification? by Shaper_pmp · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Copyright was intended to temporarily reward the artist, to encourage them to produce art.

    (s/innovator/innovations/ but it's all the same).

    Artists do not commonly live for 100 years. Especially not 100 years from when they produce the work that gets them the most praise.

    Even if the artist got 100% of the royalties from the copyright, extending it past the artist's natural lifetime is meaningless.

    In addition, even compensating the artist for their entire natural lifetime is counter-productive, since it removes the driving force (according to traditional wisdom, above) behind their production or art. If you're singing to eat, then giving you all the money you'll ever need reduces your need to sing. This is the exact opposite of what copyright is intended for.

    Finally, artists commonly don't even get 10% of the profits from their work. Why? Because the copyright is usually owned by a large corporation, which had no hand whatsoever in the creative, artistic work. They simply publicise the artist and distribute the art, and reap 90%+ of the profits from it.

    Given this state of affairs, extending copyright does nothing but feed more money to already overcompensated multinationals, while either shutting out the originating artist or (if they own their own copyright and get all the profits) discouraging them from producing further art.

    This is fucking obvious. Why don't people see it?

    Or are they just blinded by all those dollar bills the entertainment industry keeps piling over their heads?

    --
    Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
  8. record company executives by ZorroXXX · · Score: 5, Funny
    I think Douglas Adams was quite on spot in one of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books where he describes a bar populated with somewhat less attractive clients:

    He glanced around at the motley collection of thugs, pimps and record company executives that skulked on the edges of the dim pools of light with which the dark shadows of the bar's inner recesses were pitted. They were all very deliberately looking in any direction but his now, carefully picking up the threads of their former conversations about murders, drug rings and music publishing deals.

    --
    When you are sure of something, you probably are wrong (search for "Unskilled and Unaware of It").
  9. Re:Why not? by SnapShot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've fought this battle many times as well. Patents are not trademarks are not copyright.

    However, the general problem is similar. Large corporations have co-opted all forms of legal intellectual property protection to the detriment of personal rights. Whether we are talking about Angus McDonald's pub being sued by McDonalds Inc., effectively infinite copyright terms, or patent arsenals designed to forstall competition there is a general trend of those with the money and power abusing the IP laws to expand their power and increase their money.

    Now, no one honestly expects the corporations and their governments to do anything else, but we don't have to like it and, hopefully in the long run, we won't have to accept it.

    --
    Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
  10. Re:Why not? by 'nother+poster · · Score: 5, Insightful

    One of the main differences is that patents have something resembling realistic expiration terms. 20 years from application, the last I remember seeing. That means that IBM, or Microsoft, or whomever can only monopolize the information for 20 years, then anyone can use it to produce an item. That means that if I invent something at 30 that pays well, and I want to continue getting income after I turn 50, I need to invent something new. Thus adding to society. If I write a book or song, my grandchildren will still make money off it with them making no contribution to society. That's the problem as I see it.

  11. Re:Pervert? by StrongAxe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I, for one, hope he is guilty, because if he's innocent, he'll have gone through hell and a half for no reason other than being really, really weird. And that shouldn't be a crime in America.

    Hoping someone is guilty just to salve society's conscience is a bit like robbing someone at gunpoint, and then afterwards hoping he was a criminal because then he would deserve it.

    Much like the rationale for the Conquistadores raping and pillaging the Americas, because, after all, the natives were merely heathens, which made it "all right".