UK Copyright Under Fire Again

stupid_is writes "Following on from the story on the Gower Report in the UK, a host of musicians (over 4,500 of them, including poor, starving stars such as U2, Paul McCartney and Peter Gabriel) have taken out a big ad in the FT to back the call for an extension to copyright in the UK. Allegedly, that's what the British public wants — although the survey seems to be asking a different, rather biased, question." From the article: "A spokesman for the Open Rights Group, which campaigns for greater digital rights, said: 'The big music firms have done a good job of persuading some artists to sign up to this but anyone who reads the Gowers review will see it demolishes the arguments for extension. An awful lot of content creators are not represented by this and recognise an extension will do nothing for creativity and nothing for the public.'"

Comments

Lessig Blog: Signed by dead artists

[wsherman]

From Lawrence Lessig's blog:

As reported yesterday, there was an ad in the FT listing 4,000 musicians who supported retrospective term extension. If you read the list, you'll see that at least some of these artists are apparently dead (e.g. Lonnie Donegan, died 4th November 2002; Freddie Garrity, died 20th May 2006). I take it the ability of these dead authors to sign a petition asking for their copyright terms to be extended can only mean that even after death, term extension continues to inspire.

Even more misleadinger

[Anonymous Coward]

The question whether they thought UK recording artists "should be protected for the same number of years as their American counterparts" is even more misleading than the article implies. UK recording artists have exactly the same length of copyright IN THE UK as their American counterparts and exactly the same length of copyright IN THE USA as their American counterparts. UK and American recording artists are treated identically in each market. The two markets have different rules but neither discriminates in the way the question implies.

They also weren't asked whether the UK term should be increased or the USA term decreased. Or whether both should be decreased.

Re:Sir Paul Has Failed Me - So have the facts

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

Paul knows a lot about this last part after suing the other Beatles for many of the McLennon songs & subsequently selling them to Michael Jackson.

Paul McCartney sued the Beatles to dissolve their partnership because he objected to the other 3 naming Allen Klein as their manager over his objections. Not only did Paul win in court, he was proven right that Allen Klein was a bad choice. Paul McCartney NEVER sued the Beatles over songs he wrote. Making that up doesn't make it true.

Sigh. Again, you are wrong. Paul McCartney NEVER sold his songs to Michael Jackson. In the late 1960s, the Beatles (yes ALL FOUR OF THEM) agreed to sell their music publishing company specifically to raise money to start Apple Corporation. George and Ringo owned only minority stakes in Maclen Publishing (a.k.a. Northern Songs in the good ol' USA), but all four agreed. Sir Lew Grade bought the publishing. Sir Lew Grade sold those songs to Michael Jackson. He did give Paul McCartney a chance to buy them back, but Paul later said that Yoko thought the price was too high and refused to go in with Paul on the deal and Paul felt that he owed it to John to go in with Yoko to buy the songs. While Paul was trying to talk Yoko into a deal, Michael Jackson offered Sir Lew significantly more money for the songs. I don't remember the exact figures, but I think Yoko was quibbling at $100 million or so and Michael offered maybe $500 million. Sir Lew didn't wait and he took Michael's offer. Your supposed quote by Paul that he sold the songs to Michael, which you admit is by your memory, is completely untrue. Paul can't have said that he sold the songs to Michael Jackson because he didn't own them and you can't legally sell what you don't own, right? Paul has commented many times on the sale and he might have said that he "allowed" Michael Jackson to buy them, which isn't really true, but he certainly never sold them to Michael.

As for U2..

[Rob T Firefly]

For those unfamiliar with U2, they're the ones who made quite a tidy profit during the "Zoo TV" era, when they based their design ethic upon rapid-fire clips of other people's copyrighted material, courtesy of video cutups by the "Emergency Broadcast Network."

Re:It's logical they would feel this way.

[monkeydo]

If you were playing in bars that normally had live music (or a juke box) it's entirely possible that you were already covered under their licensing agreement.

Mechanical royalties for authors are currently at $.09 per song. In 1963, it was $.02 per song. So $.12 of each copy of Please Please Me was paid to outside authors. Whoopdi do. Plus, since the royalties are only paid on copies sold, there's really no burden at all. In any case it's paid by the label.

How does such ignorance get modded +5 insightful?