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
It is the performances, not the score that is under debate.
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
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.
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.
No.
First, because the term 'prior art' doesn't even exist in the copyright world. Second, because copyrightability does not require novelty or nonobviousness, as patents do; instead it's originality that is required. This is a much lower standard.
The mere fact that there are multiple identical works is NOT a bar to the later of them being copyrightable. In that situation, the later one is only uncopyrightable if it was copied from the former. If they're coincidentally identical, however, copyright is ok.
A leading case on how this works is Nichols v. Universal, 45 F.2d 119 (2d Cir. 1930). You might want to read it.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
- 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
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.
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.
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.
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
And perhaps this comment on the lawsuit on Groklaw.
Karma? What's that again?