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."

Comments

Lets ask Beethoven

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to get the Ouija board out and see what Beethoven has to say about all of this. He says...

"First post!"

Hmmmm...

Re:Lets ask Beethoven

[XanC]

"There ought to be but one large art warehouse in the world, to which the artist could carry his art-works, and from which he could carry away whatever he needed. As it is, one must be half a tradesman." -- Ludwig van Beethoven, January, 1801

Proving once again

[Anonymous Coward]

That no good deed goes unpunished.

I'm confused, what exactly does copyright mean?

[mister_llah]

Is it for the protection of the original ideas?

Or the protection of individual performances?

===

Can you play only public domain songs, sell it, and then have people trading your performances withouit purchasing them be pirates?

Does anyone know?

[I legitemately don't but would like to]

It's not "free music"

[Eric Smith]

The people of the UK have already paid for it! Thus it isn't "unfair competition" either, unless the initial production of the music (not its later distribution) is unfair.

The complaint that this is unfair strikes me as being very nearly as absurd as the situation in the US where there are private companies complaining that only they should be allowed to have the data collected and generated by the taxpayer-funded National Weather Service, and that taxpayers should not be able to get the data directly from the government.

Whiners

[dtfinch]

If you not good enough to compete with the public domain, then it's time to rethink your career.

Then they'd better not broadcast any music either

[newandyh-r]

Is there any intrinsic difference between making the performances available for download and broadcasting the performances on digital radio.
If you have the right equipment (such as a Psion Wavefinder) and a reliable signal (not so easy for digital) you can record all the Proms at MP3 equivalent quality.

Re:So I guess....

[Breakfast Pants]

The difference is the governments aren't funding those people! Oh wait, Governments around the world routinely do things like that. In fact local governments often put a lot of money into funding symphonies etc.--without that funding the "Classical Labels" who are complaining in this case would have a much crappier talent pool to pick from. This same issue came up when some town was releasing its GIS data a while back... I don't see how it is even an issue if it has already been paid for (as with that data and these performances).

Re:The next logical step

[einhverfr]

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

It's both

[Sycraft-fu]

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.

So There are other places...

[mitsuhama]

to get your free http://hebb.mit.edu/FreeMusic/ classical music.

Re:The next logical step

[aussersterne]

Governments are put in place to do the things that private citizens and corporations can't do on their own: enforce order, build roads, provide for the common defense, etc.

Says who? You deftly slide this by as though it's a statement of fact. How about:

Governments are put in place to do things that private citizens or corproations won't do, but that most private citizens wish somebody would do.

or:

Governments are put in place to make golf courses.

Just what "governments are put in place to do" is a central debate of modernity that has shaped much of the history of the twentieth century. It is what this entire story is about, and why it is so controversial.

I'd be just as happy with:

Governments are put in place to do whatever it is they do and to encourage and facilitate the near-free distribution of valuable works by long-dead people that can benefit the public at large.

Re:The next logical step

[Anonymous Coward]

Won't wash. I pay the BBC about $100 a year; if I forget, they come and detect my TV and take me to court. So, it's not like the Government is paying these musicians.

I think it is brilliant that the BBC are using my money to hire musicians, play Beethoven, and give the result to the whole world for free.

Naxos lost New York expired copyright court case

[alanw]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/441 5829.stm

Naxos issue low cost CDs of classical recordings. Three months ago they lost a court case brought by the Capitol label.

A major change to US music copyright practices could be in the offing after a court ruled a record label broke the law by reissuing old recordings.

New York's highest court said Naxos was wrong to release classical recordings by Yehudi Menuhin and others - even though they were out of copyright.

The court said such recordings were still covered by common law.

What's next - prostitutes suing

[Chrisq]

.. wives and girlfriends for unfair competition

Re:The next logical step

[MightyMartian]

Most of those classical composers that the BBC is giving performances of away were themselves funded by various princes, kings and emperors. The value that Mozart, Beethoven or Bach produced, and continue to produce through performances is such that I can only nasty thoughts of those who think that the free distribution of this grandest of Western music is wrong, or that taxpayers of the present, like those of the past, should have to bear the the thought of actually putting a little culture into a world dominated by monosyllabic athletes and "singers" whose performances are possible only by sound engineers and computers.

My goodness, but what a small, greedy, mean-spirited world we've become if the BBC is attacked for giving to the public its performances of the great musical masters. Perhaps we should weed through university computers to make sure that there are no copies of Shakespeare or Chaucer (ala Project Gutenberg), because heaven forbid that a government-funded institution should ever compete with a bookseller.

Sorry, bollocks

[panurge]

News International (part of the Murdoch empire) avoids UK taxes and has done for many years. In fact, they are effectively being subsidised by the UK taxpayer.

And, as for tough competition, last time I looked The Guardian, a small circulation not for profit UK newspaper, had a website which has more page views than most of the rest of the UK newspaper industry put together, and competes with the BBC given far less resources. The truth is, Murdoch, Rothermere and Sullivan between them have reduced the UK newspaper industry to such low grade sensationalist crap that they cannot compete with anybody who does a half decent job, at least where the audience who can read and write are concerned.

BBC Funding

[ear1grey]

Agreed, but purely for the record:

"They have paid for them in their tax dollars, which their elected representatives chose to spend, via the BBC, on their creation via recording."

• 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.

Re:No

[Tim C]

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)

Re:No

[space_dude_27]

Well there's the problem: these works are in the public domain and copyright law needs to be fixed. Let's extend the period that works stay under copyright to, say, 300 years, thus increasing the incentive for classical composers to write more ace symphonies and ensuring that the record labels get the megabucks they deserve.

Re:No

[Alsee]

You're nothing but a theif who wants to be able to steal the property of people who died more than 300 years ago. Property is property, and property rights do not expire.

I am a decendant of Ug, inventor of fire. Every time you light a cigarette you owe me a license fee for using my Intellectual Property. Pay me biatch. :)

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