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Consumers vs. IP Owners: The Future of Copyright
conJunk writes "The BBC has a thoughtful article about new challenges in copyright. The problem: The rights to the audio recordings of the Beatles first album will expire in 2013. While consumers stand to benefit from competing releases of the materials, the copyright owners are of course terrified. And the artists? This one doesn't even seem to affect them."
Thats the entire point of copyright- a limited monopoly in exchange for greater incentive to produce. It is expected to eventually run out. The problem here isn't that its going to run out, the problem is that its been over 40 years and it hasn't run out already!
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
It's highly likely that copyright in the USA will be extended again by then. History tells me that much.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
To get the laws changed. More than enough time. Ask Disney.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
I am the owner of "Nothing here to see; move along."© Pay me.
Is it the copyright law as it now stands, or is it that the work of the Beatles specifically is in question? Does their work somehow present a "problem" because it is considered by the poster to be more important than someone else's work?
"Me fail English? That's unpossible." - Ralph
And the artists? This one doesn't even seem to affect them.
Naturally - they still hold the copyright on the lyrics and music. So the performance moves into the public domain, but that doesn't mean nearly as much as the copyright status of the lyrics and music. Nobody will be performing songs from "Please Please Me" for free. But royalty payments for the album itself will dry up.
Of course, a lot can happen in seven years.
-h-
Just wait. The Bottled Head of Paul McCartney's gonna be pissed!
Please, stop using the words "owner", owns" etc. when you're talking about copyright and similar things. For that matter, please stop talking about "intellectual property", too - there is nothing here that's property or being owned.
What copyright *is* is a time-limited monopoly granted by the state, with the expectation that you will use this incentive to create stuff that society as a whole benefits from; it's not and never was supposed to be a never-ending money making machine.
Using words like "property" and "own" to describe copyright just reinforces the (wrong) idea that copyrights should not ever run out in the minds of the general, uninformed public.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Which is one of the reasons Disney was among those who fought tooth and nail to get copyrights extended to 70 years after the creator's death. Now they've re-acquired the rights to the first character Walt created and lost to someone else, back when he was paying his own dues.
Of course it's rarely the dead guy who cares about making more money, it's those who feel some eternal sense of entitlement.
Just imagine where we'd be if Mozart's works were still held by his heirs. Back in his day after the initial performance works fell to the public domain, which was to encourage the creator to be more productive. Now we have a system where the same tired crap gets dragged out for years and years and someone build theme parks around it.
When was the last time Mickey Mouse actually appeared in an original cartoon or film?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Don't worry about the artists. In fact, at least Paul will roll in his grave by then - and we get a new energy source. :-)
Limited copyright is an essential element to maintaining a consistent creative human spirit. By allowing works to be protected for a limited amount of time, the artist can comfortably turn some profit on their creation. But by allowing that protection to lapse, another creator can pick up the work of the original artist and manipulate it, turning it into something different. The whole of human creativity depends on building upon the works of others.
It's pretty frightening to think about the incredible lengths that IP holders are going to these days to increase the length of copyright ever further, all in the name of limited, short-term profits. They represent an immeasurable threat. Think about it: if copyright never expired, where would the motivation to innovate come from? There would be none, if you could indefinitely profit from one or two ideas.
Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig has some very enlightened analysis on this subject.This year marks fifty years since Elvis' performance of Heartbreak Hotel was released. It's not like this comes as some sudden surprise, though - recall the dozens of Elvis re-release compilations a few years back? Expect the same treatment for all the sixties classics in the next few years, as every last cent of cash is wrung out of them before they're finally, grudgingly handed over to the public domain.
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
OTOH, the point is likely moot anyway, as copyright will be retroactively extended as soon as Mickey Mouse starts getting near entering the public domain again. Damn you Sonny Bono!!! Oh...
I like how they did that thing that news is supposed to do, you know, where they tell the whole story, without the spin. Anyone in the US remember that? no?
50 years still seems like a lot to me. I don't see how it would need to extend past maybe 25-30 years. There are very few bands that are still active at that point and even if they are, they make money from concerts still, reguardless of CD sales. If the record label hasn't sucked enough money out of the general public in 30 years, the band wasn't good enough to begin with.
According to this, pre-1978 works had their copyright extended to 95 years from the date the copyright was first secured. This was done via the 'Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act". Why would works copyrighted in the 1950's or 1960's be expiring in the next decade?
You don't even need the US congress! I got an email just today:
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
wait ... i'm not a citizen, i'm a consumer/taxpayer
i exist to provide revenue streams for corporations and governmentsDamn you Marx !! How could you let us down like this ??!!
/rant
long week in the cubicle forest. i'll shut up and go home now ... and drown my angst with ... consumption
+1 fashionably cynical
The most reasonable compromise I've seen suggested is to have them expire by default, but allow extensions for a fee. Making available all the out of print works that would languish in obscurity otherwise, while still allowing the truely valuable properties to continue.
But I would like to suggest one further refinement that would make it fair, any application for extension would automatically make ownership revert to the original creator or their heirs. Forty or fifty years ago when the rights were signed away it was under a framework that the rights were of limited duration. If they are going to continue in perpetuity, then fair selling price needs to be renegotiated.
The Constitution reserves for Congress the power to secure "for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
A lot of copyright problems would obviated if this were enforced as written. The Beatles' works for instance would be controlled by Sir Paul and Ringo. Mickey Mouse would be in the public domain because his inventor and author is dead. Bands, not labels, would control their music. Inventors, not IP holding corporations, would control their inventions.
You cannot sign away your inherent legal rights--no matter how many contracts I sign with you, it does not allow you to act fraudulently or negligently toward. Imagine if copyright worked the same way--if it were illegal to sign away your copyright. A lot of bullshit would be avoided IMO.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
US copyright law does not apply to the EU, or to International Copyright Law.
We have a never-expiring copyright.
Luckily for me, when I published stuff years ago in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, I sent a copy to the US Library of Congress, so my copyright will never die.
Now if I could just do something about patenting my own genome, I'd be set.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
This about those who would treat copyright as a pure property right vs. those who don't. Almost everybody who wants copyright treated as a pure property right doesn't create anything. They are a publisher or corporation who aggregates the copyrights of all its employees, or some other entity concerned with the accumulation of coprights.
Accumulating an asset that has a built in time when it becomes utterly worthless is a very unpleasant proposition. It is much nicer and more convenient to treat the asset as some sort of durable good like a box of bolts or something. In fact, copyright has the potential for being the perfect asset since it doesn't decay at all!
But, the people who do create know that being able to create relies on a rich environment of ideas to draw from. Treating copyrights as a pure asset destroys that environment and creates an environment where the only things that get created are those the primary holders of copyrights are willing to allow to be created.
It really irritates me when I see the word 'consumer' when I hear talk about copyrights. There are no 'consumers', there are people. Everybody writes things and says stuff, and many people sing or dance or make up silly lyrics or any number of things.
This isn't about 'consumers', those incredibly dumb entities that eat products and shit cash. Casting it as that kind of a fight is inane.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Someone owns the Internet Protocol now?
I wish people would stop using the term "consumer" as a synonym for "people". A lot of people, including myself, think of the term "consumer" is insulting. It's like using the term "idiots" for "people".
In this case, using the would consumer is pointless anyways. When these works move into Public Domain, it is no longer a matter of consumption. It's a matter of something becoming part of a culture. It's like saying that people who read Leaves of Grass are spend-a-holics.
I wonder if short copyright terms hurt other artists (i.e., not those whose copyright has lapsed) in indirect ways.
To me, the current world is drowning in media and choice. In many ways, media consumption is a zero-sum game. I can only listen for so many hours per day. Current iPods hold upwards of 1,000 hours of music -- you can listen for 8 hours a day and only hear the same song 3 times a year if you want. This massive supply of music makes each track less valuable.
Think of it this way. When my iPod has 15,000 songs, is the 15,001st song worth that much? For the most part that 15,001st song must be worth far less than $0.99 and maybe less than a penny. Sure, I may have a few hot favs that command a premium but, by and large, an iPod's worth of music provides all the fresh (or relatively fresh to me, that is) music that I could ever hope to listen to.
Short copyright terms help flood the market with large volumes of cheap music and current recording artists will find themselves competing against inexpensive copies of old, great songs.
As a consumer, I want music to be plentiful and cheap. In contrast, an artist wants music (including music created by others) to be rare and expensive.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Please, stop using the words "owner", owns" etc. when you're talking about copyright and similar things.
Precise discussion about law uses words defined in the letter of the law. The statute in question, 17 USC 101 et seq., defines and uses the phrase "copyright owner".
Now pay up. ^^
Well I'd be out of a job. My employer would see no reason to pay me for something that they have no right to and that I could simply give to a competitor whenever I wanted.
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
I know that there will be a lot of anti-recording industry comments on here, but it is clear that their main interest in extending the copyright period is to protect us from low quality Beatles compilations. Consider the irreversable damage that could be caused to children if their first experience of the Beatles has the songs in a less than ideal order.
Please think of the children.
He wear no shoeshine he got toe-jam football
He got monkey finger he shoot coca-cola
He say I know you, you know me
One thing I can tell you is you got to be free
Come together right now over me
The Beatles don't own the copyright to their works. As far as I know, Michael Jackson does (Goggled it, but found no other owners).
At the moment you can't find pieces of music because they are under copyright but it's not worth printing more CD's. I would make the statement that huge amounts of music are disappearing off the face of society but I can't, because I don't know of something that isn't there. How many pre-1950 vinyl has been released on the P2P networks...a little. By the time the Beatles will be released onto the networks most of the uncopyrighted performances will have died (lost, damaged, etc....) and we will end up in the same situation as with classical music where the music isn't copyrighted but the performance by the blah, blah, blah orchestra is and thats the only one you can obtain.
/. bug #926803 - Why I can post.
You're funny! But I own the rights to the usage of the term, "Anonymous Coward." Please pay me in cash. Thank you, come again!
phrased another way: extending the length of ip creates a little more financial wealth at the expense of a much greater amount of cultural wealth
irrationally long terms of copyright extension creates a situation where a company gets a few more bucks, and our entire culture suffers for the sake of that
common sense copyright periods is a balance between the need to reward innovators, and the need to provide future innovators with material to work with
the current ip environment is shortsighted in that it destroys our culture for the sake of financial greed
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
And some people can win the lottery too. The vast majority of us, however do not. Most of the authors in that store will do well if they're able to make their car payments. Even when one does hit, such arguments ALWAYS seem to ignore the amount of time, training, effort, and skill involved it took to get to that point in the first place.
The bottom line is the for every King or Clancy there are 100,000 other writers who just get by. Same for musicians. But your line is that we need to demolish the system because someone has the potential to hit the Powerball.
Worse, because in their case they managed to create something that people actually wanted, valued, and were willing to pay for...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
doesn't Michael Jackson own the publishing rights to the Beatles lyrics? so its not just Paul McCartney that has a stake in trying to extend the copyrights
Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer
I don't know why it's so hard to conceive of a system wherein a created work is owned by the creator until their death, or ten years, whichever is longer (so that the heirs of an artist who suffers an untimely death less than ten years after releasing a work can still reap some benefit.)
Exclusive right to intelectual work, like copyright and patents, should be gave for just enough time to incentive the creation of the work.
No one can tell exactly how much time is it, and it may depend of the kind of work are you doing and how you can profit from it. But one thing is sure, with the great improvment of the communication and logistics, that time is much lower than it was when those "50/70 year" laws were created.
But the law makers still don't want to realize that.
The problem is that copyrights no longer protects inovation, as it was designed to be. Today, when the time to recover that mental investment is much lower, it majorly protects copyrights administration, that's much less concerned in inovation and diversity than in imposing to the society a specific work they hold copyrights.
"Society may give an exclusive right to the profits rising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility" Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson, 1813. ME 13:333
In 1790 Congress passed the Copyright Act, which set the period of a copyright at 14 years, with the opportunity for the original author to renew for a second 14 years if he was still alive. This law existed unchanged for the next 100 years. The feeling of the original lawmakers, who were, incidentally, the same people who wrote the Constitution for the most part, was that copyrights and patents encourage authorship, science, and industry by providing a limited monopoly to authors and inventors. This monopoly was required to expire after a short time so that the public could then reap the benefits of these new works in their turn. There was, therefore, a balance between the good of encouraging authorship and invention with a limited monopoly, and the good of public ownership after a short period of time.
Since 1890 Congress has seen fit to extend the term of a copyright eleven times. It has gone from a maximum of 28 years in 1790 to the life of the author plus 70 years currently, or 95 years if the ownership is corporate. The issue that prompted congress to enact all of these extensions had nothing at all to do with encouraging invention, art, or science, and everything to do with the fact that valuable corporate properties such as the copyright for Micky Mouse were due to expire. The clear and unequivocal result of this Congressional effort is that the public suffers by not being able to freely access and use works that would have long since become public property under the intent of the constitutional framers . . . and the corporate copyright owners maintain their lucrative legal monopolies. There is no question at all of public benefit here, only corporate subsidies at public expense.
http://breakthelink.org/Costs.php
On a related note: if you are in the EU (and maybe even if you are not), you may want to sign the petition for public geo data. Apperently, there is a proposal considered by the EU that would make geo data collected by public agencies no longer free to use.
I have discovered a truly remarkable sig which this 120 chars is too small to contain.
More like there are a few hundred to each big success. I don't see too many Foyles-sized book shops around the cities I visit most, to accomodate the millions of starving authors to go with Clancy, King, Rowling, Pratchett, Crichton, et al.
What you rather shamefully overlooked is for most trade paperbacks, the initial order by distributors and bookstores, immediately after publication, is where most of these authors sales are going to occur. After the store has returned unsold extras or tossed them on the bargain table, you're hard pressed to find them again except at a used book shop. A second run of a relatively unknown author is an exceptional thing and I do know a few who have been lucky enough to have garnered enough of an audience to see that, after several years on the shelf. Nothing is preventing them from doing that. But you seem to assume there are greedy bastards lurking around the land itching to reprint obscure books which are three years after publication. Considering the overhead of the printing business that's pretty silly.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I don't really see why folks are so bent out of shape about copyright when we already live in a world where all of the decisions regarding producing and consuming copyrighted material are voluntary.
As a content producer, I am free to waive copyright on anything I produce. As a content consumer, I am free to avoid copyrighted material. Nobody is being compelled to do anything they do not want to do.
Yestarday, all my copyrights expired so far away
Now* it looks as though they're here to stay
Oh, I belive in royalty pay
*thanks to Evil Mega Corp (c) lobbying agency
"Intelectual Work" (IW) is a better word than calling it "Intelectual Property".
Someone may have exclusive rights over a IW, but they don't own it because that rights have, or at least should have, a specific time duration.
Calling it a property expose (or impose, just depends of how much times you repeate it) and idea that right never expires.
This will scare you all. Currently, due to a bizarre and rather alarming interpretation of copyright law with the common law tradition in New York, it seem that Capitol Records (the holders of the sound-recording copyright to the beatles back catalogue) have won a landmark victory which means that in the US they have copyright FOREVER on the beatles music. Yes Forever. Read more at Groklaw here... this has distressing implications and shows that the record labels will do anything to hold onto that monopoly....
---- The Open Source Record Label : : LOCARECORDS.COM
Artist/vendor gets a government-mandated monopoly for their created work, and it is protected in law, for a limited period of time. It is a grant from the government/people. This protects the effort that went into the work, and lets the creators of it make more money from it than they would have otherwise, giving the incentive to create more.
Once that time expires, it is time for the artist/vendor to pay up on their half of the bargain: the work passes into the public domain.
You should not be able to renegotiate the deal after the fact. The Beatles or their agents knew the terms of the deal when they made the work, distributed it, and made loads of money off it. If they did not like the terms, they should not have distributed the work. They should have kept it to themselves.
We had a deal. It's now due (well, in 2013). Suck it up and live with it, or make us (the public, to which the artists/vendors now owe) a better offer.
For example, are copyright holders going to grant the public a little broader fair use terms? Or offer us a low, flat rate for certain types of copying? SOMETHING. You can't just say, after decades of making boatloads of money from the arrangement, that you don't want to pay off your side of the contract.
Worse is the fact that, actually, many copyright holders have done everything in their power to destroy/limit/technologically eliminate "fair use" using DRM and other such techniques.
Might just be a low, manditory, derivitive works fee. So I'd do it something like this:
You create a work, it's automatically copyrighted to you for 10 years. You get complete exclusivity and control as you do now. After 10 years it falls in to public domain unless you register and renew. When you do that you've two choices: Extend it for 10 more years, with the same exclusive control but then no more extensions after that ever. Extend it 25 years with manditory licensing, with another 25 year extension permitted after that.
In that way works that people simply neglected would fall in to the public domain fairly fast. If you were still cashing in, you'd get another decade to do so. However if you'd created something really great, you could keep making money off it for half a century, but you have to let others use it. They have to pay you, but the fee would be mandidated, not set by you.
I think it would provide a fair balance between creators getting compensated and the public having access to a work. I don't mind that creators want to be paid for use, I mind that they want to be paid stupid amounts.
What's the deal with fair use? For instance, can I make a website about movies and display a screen-grab of each film without getting sued?
If I wrote a story about two young lovers whose families were feuding and they ended up killing themselves, anybody would recognize that as a take on Shakespeare. The question is: If "Romeo and Juliet" were copyrighted right now, would I be infringing on its copyright?
Seems to me that a copyright protects a specific expression, not an idea. If there are only six plots in the world -- or however many they say there are -- those plots aren't copyrighted. Only the stories that build upon those plots are. I can use the same general idea as Shakespeare without stealing his exact words.
This idea of the "remix culture" bothers me. Again and again people repeat this idea that the only way to be creative is to swipe from someone else. This does not strike me as true creativity. Make your own music. Write your own stories. Copyright isn't holding you back; your own intellectual laziness is. Why not channel some of the energy you would expend on repealing copyright laws into creating something original and worthwhile of your own?
Breakfast served all day!
As copying becomes easier, copyright becomes a heavier burden on society.
As copying becomes easier and digital processing becomes more of a commodity, creation of new materials becomes easier, thus requiring less of an incentive.
So as the years pass by, you would expect copyright terms to shorten and perhaps even disappear (Who knows? Maybe we have already reached a state where an artifical incentive to create is no longer necessary). But for some odd reason, copyright terms get longer and longer. The camel's back is already breaking, and in many countries, copyright lost society's respect entirely.
Currently, the difficulty in enforcing copyright is a huge release on the stress copyright is forming on the society, but if the new DRM technologies are successful, this release will also be blocked - and I anticipate an explosion. Perhaps a positive one, because it will almost surely result in the abolishment of copyright.
Blockquoth the AC:
Somewhere along the line, a lot of people in these discussions got convinced that having access to good material was actually a right and not something that absolutely required the creator to let them have it, and that such good material appears by magic and does not require vast amounts of hard work on the part of skilled people to produce, and now we have these asinine comments about how "unfair" copyright is, all of which ignore the possibility that without that framework, you might not have most of the good material at all, ever.
BTW, I write this as someone who's involved with copyright from both sides and for multiple types of media in each case, so I have no particular axe to grind here. I just want to see a fair deal that both recognises the valuable contribution of those who create works and helps to distribute that work for the benefit of society at large in due course. I find it annoying when all these economically-deluded, "everything should be free!" fanboys start telling us how evil/unnecessary/unfair copyright is; it's almost as bad as when people object to common terminology on the basis of irrelevant technicalities instead of making a real argument!
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The copyright on the lyrics and music is held by its writers eg Lennon and McCartney in this case, along with their publishers. The 'publishing' rights are held by Michael Jackson who may have hocked them to Sony (?) which means that they collect all songwriting royalties payable on them, for the Beatles' own recordings and anyone else's cover versions. Publishers then pay writers a percentage of the gross royalty, usually 50%, but probably a bit more in McCartney's case.
The copyright on the recordings is held by the record company, in this case EMI. They collect on sales and performances (eg on radio or TV) of the actual record, and pay a set royalty to the artists, and also the producer. This is the copyright that is going to expire.
So, when it does, Ringo won't collect anymore on his royalties for drumming on the album, and since he didn't write the songs, won't get any of that money either. Paul will still collect on songwriting royalties for this and all other versions of the tunes on the album, but obviously won't get any royalties for having played on the album either.
Thought I would clarify since about 3 people above and below have got it wrong.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
Before this happens, you can expect a mass purchasing of laws to extend copyright length.. perhaps permanent...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"Please, stop using the words "owner", owns" etc. when you're talking about copyright and similar things. For that matter, please stop talking about "intellectual property", too - there is nothing here that's property or being owned."
Let's not call a landowner an owner either. After all, it's just a piece of paper issued by the govt. saying he owns the piece of land.
Here's the thing. Only the biggest socialists would say a person can't own land, because most people can afford to and want to own land. However, most people can't create anything worthwhile to copyright, so everyone wants copyright to expire so they can get something for free off of the backs of creative people and their investors.
Simple unchanged copying as a form of copyright should last forever, just like any other property.
Vote for Pedro
Think about it: if copyright never expired, where would the motivation to innovate come from?
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned it yet, but Spider Robinson's excellent short story Melancholy Elephants discusses that exact idea. Its point is that, if copyrights are extended indefinitely, we eventually smother our own creativity.
Explain to me the advantage of removing copyrights. Why should control of the works be given to anyone just because time has passed?
"Here's a spoiler: You're will die alone."-Triumph the Insult Comic Dog
Copyrights on songs by the Beatles are about to run out but Robert Jonhsnon's lyrics are still copyrighted? Robert Johnson died during the 1930s and his works should be public domain but apparenlty aren't. And who owns the copyright anyhow? It damn well can't be his heirs because he didn't have any (legitimately that is... you know how bluesmen are). Is Robert Johnson's work relevant now? Ask Eric Clapton. And since they aren't RJ's heirs why should they have the copyrights anyway? I mean, I can understand Janie Hendrix having the copyright to Jimi's work but someone unrelated to him decades from now?
As to the Beatles copyright holder being terrified... too bad. Want to make money? Do something! I haven't been living comfortably off something someone else did for decades, why should you? Why should anyone be able to do something like write a song or a book and live off it their whole lives when the rest of us can't live off a few months of work our whole lives? That's why the entire system is completely screwed. I don't know how many times every day it's pounded into our heads "think of the artists" but if they've made plenty of money off of something already why should I care? Not only that but some corporation can apparently just take the copyright to a dead man's work and keep it out of the public domain decades after it should've passed into that as well. The original 14 years is plenty of time and no one but the heirs of someone should be able to have the copyright after their death. It may be legal but as far as I'm concerned this is just copyright theft.
Think about that the next time someone calls file-sharers thieves. Legally, a corporation can own the copyright long after the person who made the work is dead. They can legally steal from us, the people, but we can't legally steal anything back.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
Not to worry :-) The usefulness of record labels is now at an end. Creation, publishing, distribution, and marketing can now be had practically for free. Check out Tunecore to see what I mean. Why would any band give up their copyright and settle for second class shelf space and loan payments when they can post their works in their pajamas? Create music with software and instruments, distribute online, done. There is no step three ;-) As more new bands go direct, more revenue streams disappear for the big labels. The big labels will eventually be unable to afford lobbyists.
Let Disney pay $1 million every 10 years to renew Mickey Mouse's copyright, if they want to.
In fact, make it a lot lower (like $1000) so other artists with a copyright worth protecting can protect it too.
I don't give a rat's ass about the Mickey Mouse copyright.
What I care about is EVERYTHING ELSE IN MY CULTURE that is being *stolen* from me just so Disney can keep their stupid Mouse.
All copyrighted works should pass into the public domain after 10 years unless the author of the copyright registers and pays a small fee ($20?) within those first 10 years. The registration would entitle them to another 10 years of protection. Force them to renew every 10 years and ramp up the price each time (but not severely).
That would allow the copyright holders of the 0.1% of copyrights that are still economically valuable, to preserve their interest in those copyrights after 10 or 20 or (in Disney's case) after 150 years.
For the other 99.9% of copyrights, once they are no longer economically valuable to the copyright holder, they should pass into the public domain so that *the rest of us* can build on their creative work with our own unencumbered derivative works. This has to be the default. If you don't want them to become public domain, it should be easy for the copyright holder to prevent it--but they must take some affirmative action to do so.
A vast number of copyrighted works are out there for which the authors can not be found (the "orphaned works" problem). Our society is currently preventing itself from taking advantage of these works. How are you supposed to get permission to use something when you can't even find the author but the copyright won't expire for at least 60 more years?
I seem to recall Jon Katz doing just that several years ago, with everyone's posts. I doubt the book sold many copies, but still....
If we don't extend copyright then what incentive will the Beatles have to continue making new music?!
They own the copy right, not the work. The right is the exclusive ability to duplicate the work. A right is never property, even when it's artificially created by the state and may be traded for real property. People get confused about that, which lends to the disgusting coporate welfare known as perpetual copyright. If you can own a song, like a bag of marbles the ownership should never end. Your government is not yet so asinine as to say a song can be owned.
Indeed, Congress does not even believe in "Intellectual Property". While the terms occurs some nine times in the definitions and scope you cited mostly referencing a 2002 law which is named that way. There is no definition and, hopefully, never will be.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"The problem: The rights to the audio recordings of the Beatles first album will expire in 2013."
The even bigger problem: The rights to those recordings probably won't expire in 2013, due to yet another extension of copyright duration.
That's not a bad outlook. I will not ask Time Warner for permission to sing happy birthday, the same way I would have to ask you before using your car. The Hill sisters would be outraged if I did have to ask. That's because the song is not property and it never will be. I'll always be able to share it with my friends, no matter how loud you act or how stupid you make laws. Free speech is a natural right which trumps the created rights of copyright. Good content will propagate with our without your pimping and will always be free despite your efforts. Indeed, good content will do better without the help of concentrated media and will flourish when the radio empires of the 1920s finally die.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
They aren't terrified. For them, it's a piece of cake to increase the length of copyright (again).
And that's exactly why it never will be so.
Why would a copyright owner be terrified at the loss of a declining revenue stream for which they've had 50 years to prepare?
Big crocodile tears for the copyright owners. The whole premise of the article -- that copyright is important or even just in the first place -- is doubtful. It seems that revenue generation is all it takes for Mickey Mouse, for example, to overthrow the careful(?) logic of the existing copyright limits.
Meanwhile the belief that copyright protection stimulates creativity flys in the face of every true artist on the planet. Artistic creativity is impossible to suppress and impossible to cause. It's creative. It comes out of nothing, and certainly not out of laws. You want more creativity, stop critisizing people who are different. Write laws that extend freedoms, not that extend copyright limits.
Whatever happened to him anyway? Did he fall into the Hellmouth?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
No copyright on planet earth should last more than 15 years MAXIMUM . Will there be any beatles left by 2013? Paul sang "When I'm 64" a long time ago. Come June 18 of this year, Sir Paul will sing "Now that I'm 64". Very very few people can milk anything that far. 14 years should be a pre-set maximum, with an option to renew once for an additional 10 years. 24 years seems like a long time though. It's more than half of a career span. Milking something for that long seems like you are milking it too hard. Industrial processes though, should not be renewable. 14 years should be the maximum (that includes drug patents, copyrights, all IP). 10 years for non-artistic works, 24 for artistic ones. No exceptions.
"owned"
To the people who believe IP is property, and thus should forever belong to their creators:
What is the difference between patents and copyrights? Why protect copyrights so long while not allowing the same with patents? I would venture to argue that patents play a much more important role in our lives.
eTrade SUCKS
Shouldn't the EFF be challenging the constitutionality of current copyright law in the United States? The original copyright law which came out while the framers of our Constitution were still alive allowed for 14 years + a 14 year extension. Any longer amount cannot possibly be what the framers conceived. Mr. Scalia recently stated that it's ridiculous to think of the Constitution as a living document that changes with time so at least he should be on the side of repealing the unconstitutional copyright laws currently in place.
Does God treat us as servants or friends? Check my homepage.
I'll still have to buy the White Album again.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Finally a story that BeatlesBeatles should have submitted, and he's nowhere to be seen.
Read the best of all of Slash: seenonslash.com
"Think about it: if copyright never expired, where would the motivation to innovate come from? There would be none, if you could indefinitely profit from one or two ideas."
Right. Pixar creates a hit film, Toy Story, and then closes shop because they make a fortune. That's what happened, right?
Vote for Pedro
It is a limited monopoly. Reference: the Constitution. The whole point of my post is that it is wrong to treat copyright like a piece of land that can be bought and sold. I know that's how it is now, but my point is that that ignores its original formulation, which was as a right for individuals. Don't make the mistake of thinking I don't understand. I can (and do) recognise and understand the way things are--but I disagree with them.
Your analogy to land is wrong in three ways.
First, land does not expire, while copyright and patents do. In fact this is the key difference between real property and "intellectual property."
Second, limiting right to sell does not limit right to charge for use. When I buy a CD I'm not buying "intellectual property," I'm buying a use of intellectual property. The proper land analogy is putting up a restaurant on a piece of land. You can make money with the restaurant without ever selling the land. In fact you can make just as much money with the restaurant if you don't even own the land, but are simply granted use of it for free. You can serve as many people as you want in that restaurant, just like you can sell as many CDs as you want based on one set of music.
Third, if you read the Constitutional language it does not convey ownership, it literally conveys a "Right." It's not like it's ambiguous. That is why I compared it other legally granted rights.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
the copyright owners are of course terrified
Why, yes. And I'm terrified that my subscription to Motorcyclist is going to expire. And I'm terrified that my insurance policy will expire. Don't they realize that now I'm going to have to spend more money to get new magazines and spend more money to get renewed coverage? Shouldn't I just be able to buy some terminal product once and continue to benefit from it forever, even if I know going in that it will expire? The evil insurance company is just trying to get out of their responsibility to cover me forever once I pay them once.
Evil lying bastards, twisting the soft, smooth brains of our politicians. You know what spurs innovation in music? I mean beyond experience, suffering, love, anger, pain, joy, and a burning need to create that won't let actual musicians not make music? Short-term copyrights that require entertainers and labels to make an ongoing effort in order to earn a living. A couple million dollars for "Oops I Did It Again"? When the money comes that easy, I wouldn't put any more effort into it than she does.
You want musicians to put blood, sweat, and tears into their music on an ongoing basis? You want them to put the same dedication into their jobs that we do? Make them work for a living. Cut copyright to five years.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
If patents and copyrights were inalienable, then nobody could benefit from their exploitation. It is the alienable nature of property that makes property valuable. Markets make the value.
Who would hire an engineer to do research to develop a product, if you are not permitted to obtain exlcusive rights in the engineer's work? Why not simply wait until the engineer completes the work, if ever, and then negotiate for the rights?
Copyrights protect works of authorship fixed in tangible media, from unconsented reproduction, distribution and derivation FROM THE WORK and other exclusive rights, subject to a litany of limitations of those rights dedicated to the public. Patents protect novel, useful and unobvious inventions from the unconsented making, using or selling of the invention, whether or not they ever heard of the inventor or the invention, with very few limitations other than a very limited "experimental use" defense.
Copyright exists upon original creation, without respect to novelty, and requires no effort to protect. Patents do not exist until application is made and examined for compliance with statute.
The scope of copyright, which requires copying, is far far narrower than patents. This is why, for example, you can clean room a computer program to avoid copyright infringement, but clean rooming provides no protection.
Different rights to protect different things in different ways with different protections and limitations. This is why their terms are not necessarily the same.
I wouldn't suggest having copyrights last until the creators death...
Murder shouldn't be profitable.
As for vesting, I think that it should be more like patents. Upon creating a work, you can get a copyright, but that window of opportunity swiftly expires. Thus, authors that don't care (such as most of us here vis-a-vis our posts) can take no action and no copyright will ensue, but authors that do care can engage in a token action so that they are identifying themselves and the relevant works, and can get rights in them. For patents, it's a year from the time when the invention becomes publicly known (paraphrased). I figure that's a good span of time.
I take it that you don't personally know anyone who creates works for which copyright is important.
My mother is a self-employed medical illustrator. Over the course of her career she has created and sold thousands of images. Her work has also been published in violation of her copyright with disappointing frequency, and this is common in the field. Unfortunately, it simply isn't economically feasible to go to court. An individual artist does not have the capital to pursue litigation against a large publishing company. Periodically a publishing house will trample on enough people that they can coordinate and pool resources, but the gains are minimal and it is a stressful time consuming process for everyone involved.
Now can you imagine what it would be like if every single work had to be registered with a government office to get any legal protection whatsoever? There are many more fields that are affected by copyright than are contained in the common vision of decadent pop music stars.
At any rate, I don't think any government agency would have the capacity to handle the volume of registrations with anything approaching efficiency.
With Beatles lyrics his only remaining asset, and deeply in debt, MJ releases a triple CD of Beatles covers.
I can't wait.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Non-transferable and only granted to individuals and small well defined groups of people. If a corporation would want to patent or copyright something it should proove beyond any reasonable doubt that a large part of the corporation was involved in the creation process.
--
This sig. is not a sig...
I dunno, I can see another copyright extension act tagged at the bottom of a terror bill or education bill. /. why must I slow my brain down to post less than once/5min? I just read thru 3 articles here already. this is my 4th.
Yeah, I'm serious. We don't need people owning bits. You know about the pirate party in sweden? I think they have a point.
Even GPL and other opensource licenses use copyright to stand up. But the default copyright is more like a NOCOPYright. MY reasoning is that if opensource model seems to work (have you seen jamendo?), why should the people give any monopoly to the artists, when after all the monopoly is actually given to the record companies and in the end we end up with the overwhelming majority of those artists being unable to success, having a lot of difficulties and only a small minority earning the big money. And who suffers with this ? the people. We don't need no stinkin copyright, what we need is some kind of copyleft by default, and if you want, you can go even more open like public domain, etc..
And this doesn't happen only with copyright, the same applies to trademarks, patents, etc, but I will not enter in that in this post. If they're here is because some powerful lobby which doesn't represent the people did his work. In the beginning, we had no copyright. Now we havethis monster, and the best thing we can do is to get rid of it.
"Of the four Beatles, Starr did the least songwriting. The Beatles explained that when he would present a song as a contender for an album cut, the song would sound (to the other three Beatles) like a knockoff of another popular song, but Starr did not recognize the similarities until they pointed it out. He did, however, write "Don't Pass Me By" (on The White Album) and "Octopus's Garden" on the album Abbey Road, albeit with quite a bit of help from Harrison. The White Album continued to show Starr's taste for country music that he had brought into the band earlier, such as on the Rubber Soul' album track "What Goes On", which was co-written by Lennon, McCartney and Starr. Starr also wrote "Taking a Trip to Carolina" (on the second CD of the Let It Be... Naked release), and received joint writing credits with the other three Beatles for "Flying", "Dig It", "12-Bar Original", "Los Paranoias", "Christmas Time (Is Here Again)", and The Beatles' version of "Free As A Bird", while "Maggie Mae" was credited as being "Traditional arr. Lennon/McCartney/Harrison/Starkey"."
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
CD's by the Beatles will have been remastered so their copyright starts from the date they were remastered, but if you own an origional recording on the Beatles then your free to copy it because it's copyright will have expired. (this is probably the reason they always remaster CDs)
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I believe that infinite copyright actually does encourage creativity--mine.
What I mean is that because the RIAA has grown so draconian and copyright law so ridiculous that I've been compelled to opt out of that noise entirely. I don't buy nor download music.
Now if I want music, I'm forced to make it myself. I've always thought that it would be nice to know how to play piano or guitar or something, but it seemed like some impossibly difficult to acquire skill that could only be obtained after shackling yourself to an instrument, or climbing the Himalayas to study at a music monastery, or having scientists run tests to establish that I possessed that elusive music gene. It was much easier to let someone else's virtuosity stand in for my own self-expression, even if there was always a low-level dissatisfaction with the passivity of that.
But now the cost-benefit equation has changed. I'm a little older and care less if I can't play Bach guitar suites straight out of the box. I've seen enough of popular music (Britney Spears, etc, etc) to think that as bad as I might be, I couldn't possibly do much worse than what other people consider "good." And the RIAA has just totally shut down my avoidance and procrastination of DIY.
So the other week I picked up my girlfriend's guitar, looked at her chord chart, and started plunking away. My fingers hurt like crazy at first. Now they're calloused enough to go for more than 5 minutes. I have enough finger strength to hold the chords. Don't know how to read music yet. I know four silly little chords, D, A, G, and E. I play them in varying combinations that don't really amount to anything. But it makes me happy. I look forward to getting home from work to play my four little chords.
So I have to say, thank you RIAA for souring the milk so much that I was forced to be weaned from their teat and feed myself.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
This seems to me to be a reasonable change to the law: As long as the creator of the content owns the copyrights, they last 40 years. The balance belongs to the estate if the creator dies, to the end of the 40 years. However, upon transfer of the copyright to ANY other entity, the copyright lasts a maximum of 20 more years, or the end of the original 40 year period, whichever is shortest.
This would incentivize KEEPING copyright. You could maintain your control 20 years, then sell it Sony, who would get 20 years out of it. If you sell it to Sony after two years, then Sony still gets 20 years of benifit, and the copyright will end after 22 years.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
TFA refers to the Beatles first album, Please Please Me.
Ringo did not write any of the songs on this album.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
Really, I think that a large part of this copyright extension is profit motive, because when you go to look at countries like China, where World of Warcraft sells for about $12, and online play is not a subscription system- a $3 prepaid card gets you about 67 hours at a time. Also, in Shanghai, an OFFICIAL Apple Store near where I live sells copies of programs like Aperture and MacOS X for about $4-5, and allowed a measure of "haggling" over the prices of iPods and accessories (not on the actual Macs, though)- These are examples of companies willing to dump profit to accomodate a market used to cheap EVERYTHING, and if such prices existed in America, the sales would be so high that there would be no need for artificial "protection".
And before anyone calls BS on me for this, keep in mind that I LIVE in Shanghai, and I am a native Chinese, so I feel like I am qualified to comment on the situation here (and also, to the paranoid people- I am NOT introducing race as a factor of preference, just stating it because I feel like it might comfort people to know that it is not just a tourist spewing off about a place he barely knows about (again, not a stereotype, just that I've seen a lot of those lately)
OSx86 FTW
The main effect of the traditional copyright term of fourteen years is to protect creative artists from competing with copies of their own recent work. This protection allows the publishers to charge more for the works for art and pay royalties to the artists. The royalties are sufficient for some artists to work full time at their art. Thus the general public both pay more money and benefit by being supplied with more work by the artists they love. Overall a traditional fourteen year copyright term is a good thing.
Modern copyright last for 60 or 70 years after the death of the artist. The main effect of these extra years of copyright protection are to permit the copyright owners (clearly not the artist himself) to prevent older work entering the public domain. The older work becomes unavailable.
Two works whose unavailability has vexed me are
There may be other books I would like to buy that are so thoroughly unavailable that I could never hear of them. Long copyright have the effect of destroying works of art.
You may be wondering why publishers don't put old works, that they no longer sell, into the public domain. A simple, though inexact analogy, makes the point.
Imagine that the building regulations stated that old houses were to be considered unfit for human habitation and demolished simply because of their age and regardless of their actual condition. Three points arise:
Perhaps the worst inaccuracy in this analogy is that cultural life is cumulative. Artists cannot create in a vacuum but must draw inspiration from their influences. If artists only have fourteen years to profit from their own works that also means that they have only fourteen years to wait before building on top of the new work of another artist. It is wrong to say that artists gain nothing by royalties paid after they have been dead for 59 years. They actually lose a great deal. They must meet an artificial and legalistic definition of novelty that prevents them from re-invigorating the works of artists long dead.
Over the next two decades gramophone recordings of the early electric guitar repertoire will be entering the public domain. This will put a floor under the quality of popular music. Obviously young persons will rush to buy to the latest and best. Even second rate new music will be preferred to the stuff that grand-dad listened to. But third rate bands are out of luck. They cannot make a living in competition with the best of old recordings.
That is as it should be. Cultural life should progress with an accumulation of classics.
There is pressure from business to extend copyright. It is important to get to the heart of the matter. "Extending copyright" means destroying good, old music so that business can make money selling new, crap music.
I don't really care about the rights to Disneys creations. It is all the obscure (and not so obscure) books that are "out of print" I care about. I'd love to be able to legally download and read those books for free, or buy a print edition of them from another publisher.
If there was a reasonable fee, say US$ 12.000 for each 12 years extension of the copyright, a lot of these would fall into the public domain.
I tried to talk to my Dad about copyright and he doesn't get it. I asked him why should someone be able to continue making money from 1 thing they did/made 50 years ago. He said because they did it. I then asked him well why shouldn't a carpenter that builds a house be able to keep collecting money 50 years after building the house and he said no because you are buying the house. My Dad is in his early 60's and if that is representative of the majority of people, we are so screwed by the entertainment industry. He just couldn't see how it was harming anything no matter how I explained it.
If you hold the copyright, you have the responsibility of creating more copies. Not necessarily derivatives (so merchandising cannot be forced, but once forced, the marchandise must be included in the copy responsibility). The only way to stop this copy responsibility is to give/sell the copyright and copy responsibility to someone else or release the works into the public domain.
If a work has never been copied (as a bespoke singlular piece of work), then copyright doesn't expire and can be passed on. If you make a derivative work of that piece with the accession of the copyright holder, this work is under the same restrictions. E.g. makng a replica reduction of a work of art and making copies of the *replica* means that copies of the replica must continue to be made, but since there was no copy (only a scale replica), the original is still singular.
For the decision of what consitutes the work, it is the generally accepted "meaning" of the work. A picture is the pigments and arrangement, a statue is the material and approximate dimension, a book is the story told and a song is the lyric and musical arrangement.
A continuing copy must be made available if necessary upon ANY request for a new copy in a form and for a price which is comensurate with the normal production values of that work - no gold-leaf hand-illustrated "copies" for a grand or pure platinum CD's!
The upshot is that as long as the creative work is enriching society, the copyright remains. When the holder of those rights decides to lapse the work, it goes back into the culture of the society it was enriching.
NOTE: Feel free to appropriate this in any manner you feel acceptable.
Or we can call them what they are: new gentry of the new feudalism (if the "protection" de facto or de iure extends ad infinuum).
Do we really want and need this? Some day in the distant(?) future there are going to be wars and revolutions over this issue. Inconsistencies and wrongs tolerated in niches have tendency of creeping into all aspects of our lives, eventually. At the moment, our liberties are under fire and all of us collectively are deemed criminals and robbers, in order to assure Lords and Ladies don't lose some of their precious "rights".
Public awareness should be raised, boycots of "content" organised. e.g. demonstrations in front of theaters on premiere eves, giving flyers "Stop feeding freedom-killing parasites. Your money buys corruption. The Mob has been owning entertainmet business for decades." to people in ticket lines.
(Well, this last sentence just reminded me... perhaps you better avoid beeing reckognised or caught by a bunch of wiseguys... now who were those nasty "pirats" again?)