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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."
Surely you jest. As any child could tell you, it is critically important to the well being of our democracy that songs like The Happy Birthday Song remain copyrighted until at least 2030.
You can't change that... by gettin' all... bendy.
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?
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.
I don't disagree. I was stating the argument for copyright. I think that a short (2-3 yr) copyriht might work, the current system is ridiculous.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
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.
since it is granted by congress, and congress use the term Intellectual Property to describe Patens, Copyright and trademark, it is in fact, a proper term.
Point in fact, copyright does state that one owns the rights to that work. So yes, owned and owns are perfectly valid.
"with the expectation that you will use this incentive to create stuff that society as a whole benefits from;"
incorrect.
It is a way for the creater to make money for a limited time. Releasing it back to the public domain is what enhances the creative opportunities of society.
" it's not and never was supposed to be a never-ending money making machine."
correct.
OTOH, if it is considered property, should we add a property tax to it?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'd like to see some rich dude state the following in his will:
- Use all the billions of dollars left in the estate to buy the rights to as much music as possible
- Re-release all that music under a Creative Commons licence, allowing full use (essentially setting it FREE!!!)
- Set up a P2P sharing network to allow those CC hits to be shared, and request donations per track (suggesting 5c per song), Also have Google ads embedded in the app (just tiny ones)
- Use the donations and ad-funds to generate more $$$ to buy the rights to more music
- Repeat from step 2
BTW. The above is patent pending...
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.
So how does all this work internationally, then? Does this mean that in 2013, in the U.S., I'll be able to legally copy an import of "Please Please Me"? Or that if I'm in the U.K., I'll be able to copy any copy of "Please Please Me", regardless of origin? Or some other variation?
...
No, it means that in 2013, you can go to an EU country and make a legal copy of the Beatles song, and not pay royalties.
But if you make it or sell it in the USA, you'll be liable for royalties.
Not to worry, I'll have patented your genome too by that point, and start charging you royalties if you have any kids
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"OTOH, if it is considered property, should we add a property tax to it?"
While I think you were being sarcastic, you make a valid point here. Are copyrights/trademarks/patents considered property to the IRS? If not, why not? Why would a company who profits directly from these assets not have to claim them as property when doing their taxes?
While I realize the implementation of such a system would be difficult at best, how is it that these companies have managed to avoid paying taxes on their "property"? How is it that the IRS has managed to miss this? According to copyright law, the liability is $180,000 per instance of infringement. In my mind, this means that the copyright holder should be expected to claim that amount as the value of their property; at least for the original copy.
On the other hand, how can one reasonably expect a fledgling(sp?) band to have to incorporate so as to handle ownership and taxes for their copyright? How would an open source programmer be expected to deal with this sort of overhead?
While I think the question creates more problems than it solves, how is it that copyright/patent/trademark holders have evaded taxation on their property whereas brick and mortar comapanies have had to deal with this since the beginning of property taxation.
Or is it simply that trademarks/patents/copyrights were *never* meant to be treated as property in the first place?
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
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.
Of course, when you look at the history of the current copyrights, you'll see that the Berne Convention was written at the behest of one author, Victor Hugo, who was displeased that other people could publish his works outside of France, because copyright was not recognized internationally.
I agree that copyright should be recognized internationally, and it should be bestowed upon creation of a work, but I also think that the life + 50 was a completely unnecessary unilateral money grab (even then), unopposed by anyone, because no one knew how important this would all become.
If anybody could give some cited insight into the history of copyright pre-Berne, or even point us to something peer-reviewed, that would be very helpful.
Personally I have no problem with the original 14 + 14 year copyright term - that's more than enough time to recover the cost of production and make a nice profit on top of that. And there are very, very, very few works (as a percentage) that are still commercially viable after 28 years, and those that are have already made millions or even billions for the artist.
The other responders to this thread made valid points about movies, but there's other forms of media for which three years would be too short - books in particular come to mind... very few are instant bestsellers, in some cases it can take a year between the date of publication and the first reviews to get published in literary mags, and it can be a decade or more before its adapted into a movie.
Personally, I also wouldn't even mind if it was extendible to the lifetime of the artist. Someone created the work, that person does deserve some say in what happens happens to it, IMHO. So I'm in agreement with you there.
Copyright that goes beyond the lifetime of the artist is simply absurd on the face of it: what additional incentive does it give an artist to create to have it remain in copyright when they're dead? I also strongly object to the notion that a copyright is something that can be bought and sold, or even that a corporation can own them (and the way "work for hire" gets abused - it makes sense with respect to newspapers and magazines, but in music it makes no sense). And this trend away from fair use rights needs to be reversed.
What I'd like to see, ideally, is some kind of phased transition to the public domain. Say, after three years, people are free to remix and make derivatives of the work. After 14, private noncommercial distribution (P2P) is legal. The author retains full rights to commercial uses for the lifetime.
It's an incentive to create *a* winner.
Put a sane limit on it and you get an incentive to create *lots* of winners.
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.
Yeah, I know about Hugo.
It is poorly organized, but there are copies of prior US federal copyright laws (and colonial laws, and the Statute of Anne), here.
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.
And with regard to int'l copyright, the only treaty obligations I will tolerate are 1) national treatment (that is, a country treats foreigners just the same as it treats its own people), and 2) an agreement that whatever conditions various states set on copyright, they work to avoid conflicts such that it would be impossible for an author to simultaneously get copyrights in various countries. (e.g. if the US said that you had to get the copies made in the US, and China said you had to get them made in China, you'd have to pick one, and I would be opposed to that)
Any particular minimum standards, however, I disagree with. Each country should do what it feels is best for its own people and goals.
-- 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.
I agree...2-3 years is way too short
However... why should computer software be copyrighted?
Sure, this is a settled issue buy the courts now, but I think that allowing software to fall under copyright was a mistake in the first place.
Software is instructions for your computer, much like a recipe is instructions for how to make food, instructions for your hands.
It has long been held that, while you can copyright a book of recipes as a complete work, you can't actually hold copyright on the individual recipes themselves, as they constitute instructions on how to do something and NOT an actual creative work in and of themselves.
I would say the the same is true of software. Software is instructions, its useless in and of itself. In fact, its instructions for a peice of hardware that you own... that tell it how to do something. There may be creativity involved in comming up with how those instructions work together, but, the instructions themselves, not so much. Hell, they don't even generally do much of anything until your computer splices them together with a whole bunch of other peices already on the computer.
I would argue that if software should fall under any law, it should be a new one... requiring full disclosure of what a peice fo software does to the consumer. That is, the source code. You should have the right to know, if you wish to know, what your computer is being told to do, and you should have the right to read it in a human intelligable form, and the right to change those instrucitons to fit your own needs.
It would be absurd to think that there should be a law against adding more sugar to your cake recipe, why do we not think it is absurd to do the moral equivalnet to the software recipe that someone has sold us?
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
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.
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