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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."
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-
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
It's a "problem" to the interests that currently make lots of money off the Beatles in particular. As the article points out, most works of the era (actually it mentions slightly older works, already free of copyright) are of little or no value. This isn't about preserving artists' rights at all, it's about "the industry" hanging on to a few sacred cash cows as long as possible--and the Beatles are among the cowiest.
fD
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".
The article is on British copyright law regarding audio recordings specifically.
This sig intentionally left justified.
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
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
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
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'
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....
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.
D'oh! Here is that list of bestsellers.
-- 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.