Slashdot Mirror
UK Copyright Extension Not Happening
chiark writes "In a surprising move (surveys said that the public supports extending copyright), the UK will not extend copyright to 95 years following a recent study. Back when this was was covered on slashdot last year, I wrote to my MP and thought no more of it, but recently a UK thinktank has called for fair use to be enshrined in UK Law. Looks like the government is realizing that the public are the ones that vote 'em in or out." From the article: "Sir Cliff Richard and Jethro Tull had been among artists lobbying for copyright to last 95 years, rather than the present 50. The decision means that from 2008 Sir Cliff's earliest recordings will start to come out of copyright. "
Is this just a case of really poor journalism or is there some provision of UK copyright law that foreits the life of the author in the duration of copyright when they transfer the ownership of the work or something? Cause I'm looking at the UK copyright act here and it says life + 50 years, and apparently in '97 there was an EU-wide ammendment that made that life + 70 years. I thought this recent news story was about people complaining that they can't have life + 95 years and when their kids grow up they'll ask for life + 125 years, and so on. As for the people who "make their living" from collecting royalties on songs their dear old dad sang back in the 50's, cry me a freakin' river.
How we know is more important than what we know.
That was a direct quote from Lars Ulrich from when Tull got the Grammy everyone thought Metallica would get, dude. There's some kind of weird poetic justice here.
Civilisation didn't actually start with the US constitution! The *original* copyright was actually 21 years, specified in the British Statute of Anne in 1710, unless you count the licencing act of 1662, which granted rights that never expired.
While I'm in favour of much shorter copyright terms, I'm not sure your analogy works very well, since dead garbagemen don't clear up much rubbish, but dead musicians do sell a lot of records.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
This applies only to music recordings, not to copyrights in general. For other works (such as the musical compositions and lyrics themselves), the rule in the UK is that copyrights last for the life of the creator plus 70 years. Although the recordings of the Beatles' early recordings may become PD in the UK in 2013, even if Paul were to choke on a stalk of brocolli tomorrow morning, all those Lennon-McCartney compositions would still be copyrighted until 2077, and until then you wouldn't be able to make copies of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" without paying composition royalties to... well... Michael Jackson, I guess.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
... to quote a song title from Jethro Tull.
... mutter mutter ... it was one of those protected 'CDs'. So I stuck it in my pc (Windows 2000 with Cdex) and sucked it out to ogg. And then went to the web site and sent a message off telling Ian Anderson what I thought of the copy protection scheme.
:-(
A few years ago I bought another CD in my quest to get the complete collection of Jethro Tull. Got it home and it wouldn't play in my car
'The Tull' still make great music, but they seem a bit confused of the whole where we are now. They seem to be a bunch of 'Heavy Horses' - beautiful things but outdated
Extending copyright has some advantages, but disadvantages as well - how many musicians started off signing their soul away to the record company to discover that the record company own their work. Changing record companies can mean that they can't include a recording of theirs in their greatest hits (I'm reminded of a hit of Donovan's "Catch the Wind" that had to be rerecorded for a greatest hits CD). Having stuff slide out of copyright means that those 'souless' musicians can reclaim their music. Of course those that have been able to retain the ownership of that are likely to protect what they can to the detriment of the greater public, and ultimately themselves.
Just my highly opinionated thoughts.
Music copyrights are a cruddy mess at best. Take, for example, a copyright on a song. Also, there will be one for the recording of the song ("mechanical copyright"). There will be a performance copyright as well. (Sheesh!)
IIRC, Cliff Richard's early work will be *only* coming out of mechanical copyright (recall, for the recording of the song). This means that a music dealer would have to pay for the rights of the songs; however, he would not have to pay for the recordings themselves. It would be the exact same if they made cover versions of the songs.
Our copyright law has was not backdated the last time that it was extended, so works recorded before the life + 70 tariff do not get an extension. This was actually something that the Motion Picture industry actually lobbied strongly for, as there were quite a lot of films in production that were based on "just out of copyright" works that could have gone right back into copyright. This was actually the case with Sherlock Holmes when the previous extension was backdated.
Goal: promote the progress... And method: secure exclusive rights. Not the other way around.
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
The issue is quite separate from copyright, and it's called an Option. It's much more common in movies and financial markets than it is in music, because the potential losses in the music industry are much lower. It's not so much that music artists are as shrewd, just that the risks aren't as big.
When you want to purchase something with a high risk, you can often share that risk with the original owner of the thing you want to buy.
In the case of The Hobbit, Saul Zaentz has the sole right to produce a movie of the hobbit. Selling the rights to such a movie is high risk for both sides. New Line doesn't know how much the movie is going to make, so from a risk point of view, they probably want to buy the rights for a minimal up-front fee, and then pay royalties. Saul Zaentz's, on the other hand, doesn't want to have New Line sit on the rights forever - someone else might be able to make it into a successful movie.
So Saul Zaentz sells New Line an option to make the movie. New Line can warrant investing money in the idea, because they know how much it will cost them to go ahead. Saul Zaentz is happy, because he still gets paid at least a little bit even if New Line decides not to go ahead with the movie, and he can then sell another option to another studio. They've shared the risk.
Which perhaps highlights that there are wider patterns in the way that broken laws/treaties/politics are being
crafted to suit specific interests while basically breaking democratic systems overall.
This conception is both atomistic and unrelational. It takes the form of individual security-seeking practices that are self-defeating and in a profound sense oxymoronic (Loader 1997b), an 'expression of the desire for sovereign agency' (Markell 2003: 22) that depends upon and projects a semblance of security produced by lifting oneself out of co-existence with others in order to render one's own existence less contingently vulnerable and the future more predictable. These practices are often at the same time exercises of private power. They eschew democratic political life in order to achieve 'distributive outcomes according to one's assets, skills and preferences' (Offe 2003: 450) in a manner corrosive of the forms of trust and solidarity upon which any sustainable notion of the public good of security draws and, in its turn, replenishes. Neo-liberalism remains committed, in other words, to forms of security that 'organize the world in ways that make it possible for certain people to enjoy an imperfect simulation of the invulnerability they desire, leaving others to bear a disproportionate share of the costs and burdens involved in social life' (Markell 2003: 22).
http://libertysecurity.org/article232.html
Cliff Richard has no kids. Thankfully.
The BPI (UK equivalent of RIAA) must be over the moon about the FUD surrounding this issue.
All the 50 year rule concerns is the copyright of the SOUND RECORDING and the money the PERFORMERS and COMPANIES get.
The WRITERS of the lyrics and music will still have copyright on the lyrics and music.
Taking the example of Move It sung by Cliff Richard and if it was played on the radio or bought in a shop.
In 2006
Song writer - gets money
Music writer - gets money
Singer - gets money
Muscians - get money
In 2008 (when the recording copyright runs out)
Song writer - gets money
Music writer - gets money
Singer - gets nothing
Musicians - get nothing
Seems fair enough to me...