Slashdot Mirror
BBC In Trouble Over Free Music
Take a Byte Out of Crime writes "According to this article, British classical labels are claiming that the BBC giving away the these symphonies, which were performed by the BBC Orchestra for free, constitutes unfair government competition. Apparently all free music really is illegal these days, or soon will be, public domain be damned."
If these are the same ones I downloaded, they spent a few minutes chatting before they started the music. Not quite as bad as ads, but still, nothing that would cause folks who just played music anything to worry about.
Too bad - but made me take the time to rip a couple CD's for my MP3 player.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Claim prior art. You know, by Beethoven/Mozart/Bach/whoever.
Prior art applies to patent law, not anti-competitive behaviour. Similarily, parody applies to copyright works, and not anti-competitive behaviour.
It is the performances, not the score that is under debate.
Gee, maybe I'm wrong, but aren't Beethoven's symphonies public domain? How dare the BBC introduce a great composer's copyright-free works to a larger audience! They're devaluing it! And by "devaluing the music", you mean "devaluing your stock value", right?
As far as I know the symphonies themselves are, but specific performances aren't (depending on when they were recorded).
"I have a porkchop, you have a porkchop. I have a veal, you have a veal".
that the BBC isn't really run by the government. It's an independent Crown corporation like the CBC in Canada.
Just more insight into why the recorded music industry is dieing.
I subscribed to BBC music magazine for quite some time - just for the music. Three bucks a month and it came with a CD attached to every cover. This isn't the first time the classical music fuzzheads have shown their cluelessness - when Sarah Brightman first started gaining popularity many decried how she was "corrupting the form." And when classical compilation CDs produced by small publishers (usually recordings of performances by east euro orchestras) many of these dying purists attacked them - again - for "diluting the value of these works."
This really is pretty standard fare for those old school classical publishers. It's not about copyright, it's about fox hunts and cardboard people and preserving their "high end" market image.
is that corporations will sue private citizens giving things away for free, claiming "unfair competition by [those people who damn well should be] the buying public."
Funny you should mention that.
Check This story from the Guardian out
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
In NAFTA countries, this kind of lawsuit would actually be successful, and the Government would be liable for all potential losses. In the US/Canada it's very common for Corporations to sue States/Provinces - surprisingly Canadians sue American states more than the other way around.
Is it for the protection of the original ideas?
Not for ideas but for your work (of art). In the US, copyright means one's right to commercially benefit from one's work. In Europe, it's basically more about being recognized as the creator of some work. (moral rights vs. commercial rights)
In this case copyright applies to the compositions by Beethoven, Mozart, etc. For those works the copyrights have expired already so you can exploit those works for your own commercial benefit.
BUT, copyrights also apply to the music performed and recorded by the BBC Orchestra. They own the rights to their recordings.
Or the protection of individual performances?
As said, both.
Can you play only public domain songs, sell it, and then have people trading your performances withouit purchasing them be pirates?
No. The performance is also protected by copyright laws. You can't e.g. record a band's performance and then sell it (bootlegs) just because you recorded it. Same applies for something you get for free, you don't have the right to redistribute it. Unless, of course, the copyright holder explicitly gives you that right.
So if you compose a song, it is protected under copyright. People cannot go and repreform that song without giving you royalties. Now in the US, reperformances, called covers, have statutory royalties, so the copyright holder doesn't have much say in it, but you still have to pay them.
However the performance is seperate, and also copyrighted. While osmeone can do a cover of your song, they can't just copy your performance without permissions.
This also means that though a given song may be public domain, a particular performance isn't. So all Motzart's works are public domain, you can post the sheet music on the net freely, without fear. However a specific performance of that music may be copyrighted. You can, of course do your own performance, or comission to be done, but you can't just (legally) copy their performance.
Both are seen as creative works. It is a creative work to create a song, but it is also a creative work to play that song. The musicians have a lot to do with the rendition of it, espically with classical music and I can say as a former classical musician, it's not easy.
Now in this case, you are allowed to trade the specific performance freely as well. The orignal songs are of course long out of copyright, and the BBC has chosen to give their work in to the public domain, which is their right.
The challenge is from greedy labels, not over copyright, but over unfair competition. They claim it's unfair that the BBC, which is taxpayer funded, is giving away works that compete with ones they sell. However the status of the copyright isn't being challenged. The BBC Orchestra performed it, and the BBC chose to relinquish the performance to public domain, that's a done deal.
to get your free http://hebb.mit.edu/FreeMusic/ classical music.
BBC Online should be protected in-line with the rest of the BBC, the content should be un-lockable via entry of my license number.
Cry me a river. You don't lose anything having other have access to this music. While it might be officially setup as you paying for a 'licence', it's essentially a tax similar to all other taxes.
If the government wants to spend it's money providing it's citizens classical music, great. If it allows others outside it's borders access to it, that's great gesture of goodwill. It's not like you don't already benefit from the goodwill of others. Open source software is an obvious example of this.
I think it's about time that we get rid of crown (government) copyright altogether. Copyright as a rule limits who gets access to something, however when a government produces something their goals should be maximizing the public benefit, and that is not equivalent to maximizing their tax revenue.
"my US based cousins can enjoy what is arguably the best part of the BBC (BBC Online) without having to contribute a penny."
Non-US servers providing bbc.co.uk and news.bbc.co.uk are paid by the Foreign & Commonwealth office, through the BBC World Service - not by the licence fee payer.
If you compose a song, it's protected under copyright. People can't go and repreform that song without giving you royalties. Now in the US, reperformances, called covers, have statutory royalties, so the copyright holder doesn't have much say in it, but you still have to pay them.
However the performance is seperate, and copyrighted. While osmeone can do a cover of your song, they can't just copy your performance without permissions.
This also means that though a given song may be public domain, a particular performance isn't. So all Motzart's works are public domain, you can post the sheet music on the net freely, without fear. However a specific performance of that music may be copyrighted. You can, of course do your own performance, or comission to be done, but you can't just (legally) copy their performance.
Both are seen as creative works. It is a creative work to create a song, but it is also a creative work to play that song. The musicians have a lot to do with the rendition of it, espically with classical music and I can say as a former classical musician, it's not easy.
Now in this case, you are allowed to trade the specific performance freely as well. The orignal songs are of course long out of copyright, and the BBC has chosen to give their work in to the public domain, which is their right.
The challenge is from greedy labels, not over copyright, but over unfair competition. They claim it's unfair that the BBC, which is taxpayer funded, is giving away works that compete with ones they sell. However the status of the copyright isn't being challenged. The BBC Orchestra performed it, and the BBC chose to relinquish the performance to public domain, that's a done deal.
These recordings are most emphatically not public domain. I've seen several posts, at +4 and +5, claiming they are.
The BBC made these recordings available for personal, non-commercial use. You're not even allowed to give them to your friends, by the letter of the law and the downloading terms. If you missed out when they were available from the BBC website, too bad; you're not legally allowed to get them anywhere else, so you're SOL.
If they were public domain, then you could do whatever you wanted with them. Copy them, sample them, sell them, you name it, they'd be fair game. They aren't, so you can't. Period.
As for the record execs complaining: I can understand where they're coming from; after all, a full symphonic orchestra is not a cheap thing to have. You're talking about over 80 professional musicians here. I don't know if they'd be employed full time or not, but also consider the venue hire for rehearsals, recordings, etc. -- a studio that can fit a full orchestra is a hell of a lot larger than one that can fit a typical rock and roll band. The BBC, however, pays for all these through the British tax payer, not through (or at least, not solely through) sales of their products.
Having said that, I do believe that the execs are misguided. Making Beethoven's symphonies available for legal, free download can be considered the hook to get people listening to more classical music who would otherwise not even consider it. It's not a cake of a fixed size; this is an attempt to grow the cake, which the recording execs will benefit from in the long term. Maybe not in sales of Beethoven's symphonies, but likely in other works. There's a lot of classical music out there.
Basically here is how it works in this case:
The score is public domain, the performance is not, thus:
should you desire you could re-construct the score from the performance and re-perform it yourself and be in the clear. You can not, however, distribute a copy of the performance without the performance owners permission (which has been granted de facto by its posting on the web by the performance owner).
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Naxos issue low cost CDs of classical recordings. Three months ago they lost a court case brought by the Capitol label.
There is no private copyright here. The BBC is a unit of the British Government, and its musicians are thus Government employees. There's "crown copyright", but that's limited to certain types of materials.
In the US, you can download many performances by the United States Marine Band. There can be no copyright on those performances. Works by the U.S. Government are not subject to copyright protection Free, legal MP3 here!
If the RIAA doesn't like that, tough.
quote "the World Service is funded by the British Government through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, although it remains politically neutral," ie the World Service is not funded via the Licence fee.
- we still use Sterling, not Dollars or Euros
- the money is collected through a licence fee, not a direct tax,
- our elected representatives have no direct say in BBC funding because it works under a Royal Charter, this keeps it independent of the government, and thus, free to report the government's business without bias.
The BBC has kindly summarised it's next 10 years here.boakes.org
You may not copy, reproduce, edit, adapt, alter, republish, post, broadcast, transmit, make available to the public, or otherwise use this audio in any way except for your own personal, non-commercial use.
You read it wrong: What you should concentrate on is "except for your own personal, non-commercial use." That dilutes all that was said before, limiting the ban for other uses, like you couldn't take a clip and use it in your radio commercial background promoting your products.
So read it as "you may do to this piece of music anything you like to do as long as it's for your personal use."
?SYNTAX ERROR
No.
1) the score is in the public domain (Mozart died centuries ago!), anyone can perform it
2) anyone who does perform it (or depending on the exact details of the agreement, commissions such a performance) owns the rights to that performance
3) the BBC commissioned such a performance, and owns the rights to it
4) it is this performance that the BBC is distributing
5) no-one is suing anyone; no-one has any legal grounds to do so
6) the idiot who's mouthing off is being a cry-baby about the government (the BBC is state-owned, but independently managed) giving away for free things that he and his associates are trying to sell, claiming that it's "unfair competition"
The BBC is perfectly within its legal rights to do what it is doing. What's more, as I help fund the BBC (through the licence fee), it could be argued that I have a moral right to access these recordings, as I helped pay for them. But then I tend to believe that anything that is produced by or on behalf of the government should be accessible to all (where appropriate - obviously there should be exceptions for security reasons, I don't want to know the details of troop movements, etc)
It's official. Most of you are morons.
No it isn't. As you would realise had you read the link you provided.
The BBC is independent of the government (sometimes to the government's annoyance). It is (partially) funded by the License Fee which is collected by government and passed on, but it is most definitely NOT run by the government.
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
Torrent of all 9 symphonies.
That analogy isn't fair. The BBC isn't hurting inexperienced users/listeners through bad product, and the BBC isn't forcing you to listen to its version, but simply gives you the option of listening to its music for free.
This is just like Opera complaining that Mozilla is giving away Firefox for free.
Article
quote: "Newscorp Investments is Rupert Murdoch's main British holding company. Although the group's profits over the past 11 years add up to £1.4 billion ($2.1 billion), it has paid no net British corporation tax."
He manages this by organising his companies into a complex web of subsidiaries incorporated in various tax havens such as the Cayman Islands. This also means he can get around the reporting requirements of financial regulators such as the SEC and the FSA.
It has also done so in this case: Other services offering downloads of classical music
This time I could be arsed.
Ultraliberals rule supreme! The "right to make a profit" is now a fundamental right enshrined in the constitution, at a higher level that the right to speak one's mind.
You just confused the heck out of all American readers. To them, "liberal" means nearly the opposite than what it means to Europeans (and, I think, the rest of the world), because it is linked to the traditional stance of the Democrat party to support civil rights (thus, "liberal") but also regulation of business and strong social security.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
That said, I find myself watching more and more BBC - partly because as their number of channels have gone up I've found more shows fit.
The upside is of course that since most shows on BBC are relatively free to experiment and not have to be commercial successes, there are often real gems to be found that doesn't get ruined by trying to target the lowest common denominator of a very diverse population.
The Guardian, a small circulation not for profit UK newspaper
Huh? The Guardian is hardly what I'd call small circulation (average 368,337 copies), and according to their corporate web site they made £32.7 million profit after amortisation and exceptional items in 2004. Maybe you're confusing them with someone else?
Oh, and you know why the Guardian's web site is so popular? Largely because they were the first British newspaper to set up an online edition.
Yeah, byteme@riaa.com is his actual e-mail address.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
You don't read groklaw, do you? That's the lawsuit which PJ used to start her article. Your example can't be dumber than PJ's challenge, because it is PJ's challenge.
But only marginally so. Parliament still has no "initiative right" (can propose its own laws), and for many subject matters it can't even vote (these laws go directly from Commission to Council, completely bypassing the Parliament). Part III is full of such exceptions that bypass the parliament entirely...
So, do you vote yes to agree with the (very small) step in the right direction, or do you vote no to disagree with the final state, which is still not democratic enough? It's not an easy decision. By voting no, people hoped to force renegotiations in order to get a more democratic constitution.
And perhaps this comment on the lawsuit on Groklaw.
Karma? What's that again?
This describes exactly how it is run. http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/running/ Governers are appointed by the queen on the advice of the Government. Sounds like it is run by the Government to me. ;)
The license fee is compulsory for anyone who uses TV receiving equipment - virtually everyone. So people are forced to pay for it.
The BBC symphonies don't include special features that speaker manufacturers will use that will prevent me from listening to other symphonies on them.
The analogy isn't about the allegations of crippleware; merely the monopolistic business practice evident in both situations.
In short, I am completely free to buy the Herbert von Karajan recordings of the symphonies (get a Mac?) without any interference from the BBC and without suffering any ill effects.
You're free to either pay for the BBCs recordings or both the BBCs recordings and one or more commercial recording. State enforcement of the license fee makes these the only two options available to you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bbc
One of the things that has been forgotten here, is that the BBC has in its constitution, the requirement that it does not stifle the free market.
There is nothing in UK law [1] that prohibits the BBC nor anyone from releasing noncopyrighted music.
However, UK law isn't what's at question here. What's at question is whether the BBC broke its own rules.
The BBC is funded almost entirely by a tax on television ownership, and overall control belongs to an unelected body appointed by the government. Part of the BBC's responsibilities are to foster the broadcasting market in the UK, a small country that would otherwise be drowned in foriegn imports. This means balancing making more programmes to encourage the market in areas where it is deficient (for instance, classical drama), making quality programmes in areas where competition might otherwise drown the market with low-quality products (for instance, soap operas), and making no programmes in areas where the market already produces diverse quality (for instance, AOR).
[1] Actually there are hardly any UK laws, England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have different legal systems. Usually English and Welsh law is identical. Scottish and Northern Irish law frequently differs.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
They don't get *any* government money. the BBC in the uk are funded by licencing fees from tv viewers. The only real difference between the BBC and a typical pay-to-view cable company in the US is that in the UK, the licence isn't optional - if you own a TV set, you must pay for the licence every year. The BBC have a monopoly on the right to receive TV broadcasts.
-=DaveHowe=-
The BBC is paid for by fees that anybody with a television is required to pay. So, no, whatever you get from the BBC isn't free, it's paid for. Given that the BBC produces some of the best programming anywhere, I think that's still a good deal.
Is it unfair? No. Contrary what companies want you to believe, they exist only because the public lets them. We can dissolve corporate charters, hand out monopolies, regulate companies, put companies under state control, and destroy business models. The only thing we can't do is disown people: people can get whatever their shares are worth after we, the people, are through with doing to a company what we think needs to be done to a company.
As a rule, we don't do a lot of unnecessary things to companies because it is bad. But people need to be reminded every now and then that corporations only exist for our benefit as a society, not for any other purpose.