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EU Proposes Retroactive Copyright Extension
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy has unveiled a plan to retroactively extend musical copyrights by 45 years, which would make EU musical copyrights last 95 years total. Why? They're worried that musicians won't continue to collect royalties when they retire and this will give them an additional 45 years during which they won't have to produce any new music. Perhaps the only good point is that the retroactive extensions won't take effect for any works which aren't marketed in the first year after the extension. Additionally, while there are many non-musical retirees wishing they could get paid for 95 years after they finish working, McCreevy has not announced any new plans to help them."
Plain old "musicians" rarely recieve royalties; royalties are generally paid to songwriters and publishers. Of course usually those royalties end up getting paid to the Big Media companies that manage to obtain ownership of the copyrights and publishing, not to the artists. But "think of the poor, aging artists!" probably elicits a bit more sympathy than "think of the record companies!".
Caveat Utilitor
The journalism community in general-and tech journalists in particular-discourage free enterprise and real competition. They are the worst kind of bandwagon-hoppers and hero-worshippers. No wonder the public does not think highly of the profession.
This thought is triggered by the ridiculous over-coverage of the Apple iPhone in a market full of new phones that get zero coverage from these same people. The Swedish Neonode, for example, brings out a laundry list of incredibly unique features, and it gets only a few mentions. The same goes for little Helio.
While a lot of this can be blamed on the fact that Neonode and Helio don't have the same buzz machine Apple has working for it, that should be beside the point. I say this because all of the hotshot big-market journalists-especially the ones working for large-circulation daily newspapers-brag about how they are not influenced by PR people and they like to do everything themselves. Meanwhile, they all flock to PR-driven Apple. Which of these jokers has written anything in detail about the Samsung iPhone lookalike?
And where are the editors in all this? A few opinion makers, hand-selected by Apple to get phones in advance with the expectation of a glowing review, and the editors think this is just peachy? And they wonder why blogs are so popular. Perhaps it's because you can get a less-corrupted opinion.
The Apple situation is the worst example, though. To me, it's almost a case of "Let's see how far we can go with these bozos." The corporations have already managed to use dubious nondisclosure agreements to get the media to do what they want, when they want. Complaints such as mine usually result in someone saying I'm jealous that I am not handpicked by Apple to do its bidding, of course. I think not. Another reaction will be for people on the handpicked list to criticize the product gratuitously, just to show they are objective. But why are they so preoccupied by Apple in the first place?
This same obsession happened with Microsoft during the heyday of computer magazines. All of a sudden all anyone wrote about was Microsoft. Readers would complain that everyone was on the Microsoft payroll or that the company got so much attention because it "advertised a lot." I'd always laughed at these accusations, since Microsoft hardly advertised at all. Why buy a cow when milk is free? They didn't have to advertise since they were getting it free from the editorial staff.
The irony is that giving too much attention to Microsoft allowed the company to take over the place; there was nobody left to actually advertise, and all the computer magazines shrank in size. Everyone then blamed the Internet. When people do that I hand them a copy of Vogue and ask why it's so thick. It's because there is a lot of competition in the fashion business. One company has never been held above the rest to the detriment of the others.
They can claim copyright for a bazillion years, still won't address the issue that it is impossible to enforce without crushing peoples freedom of speech. Knowing the EU, which is every bit as much a tool of business as the US government, they will do exactly that.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
I know why.
They need to give their children and their children's children money who didn't earn it.
Unfortunately it won't only last 3 months.
Maybe 4 dozen years.
Why don't you guys have friends or journals?
since if music is freely available to everyone, the government cannot tax the sales or the income of the artist.
Monstar L
With a 50 year long copyright, if I produced a song as a teenager, I would still own the rights even after the time that I am eligible for my pension. With a 95 year long copyright, if I produced a song, the recording industry would be profiting off of my works for decades after I am dead.
Dang, I wish I could make money for free after my retirement :(
I should see if my boss wants to consider paying me after I go so I have an extra 45 years I won't have to do any sysadmin work
My UID is prime... is yours?
Your average musician would attain fame close to 20 or later (unless they're child-stars). 95 years after that extends revenue to the age of 115, while most people don't live past 80 or 90; if the much-publicised lives of today's musicians are anything to go by, a lot of them won't make it past 50. I refuse to pay just because someone's arrogant-bastard children think they deserve money because their father wrote a song that sold well.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
In other news, people whose great great grandfathers fenced off land and invested in *property* retain the ownership to it still, despite having died many years ago.
Nobody shows any sign of caring that they can inherit property which they contributed *nothing* towards, and have full expectation of leaving that same property to their children.
yet if that property is intellectual rather than physical, there is huge outcry.
Why the double standard?
because a big chunk of many populations expect to benefit from inheriting daddy's house, whereas the people who benefit from IP are a smaller number, and thus easily attacked.
All earnings from old IP are taxed. All earnings from property are taxed. What is the difference here?
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Here's a novel idea: abolish copyright.. We should act now before this gets even more dumb.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
. . . Who are the pirates?
What happens when its the Penguins turn?
Then Tux and Linux reach the end of their copyright term will people be happy that the GPL just stops?
liqbase
for a perspective on this matter
Just disregard the pirate views if you aren't into that. There's still something in there!
The upshot is that shills like McCreevy are trying to keep the artists on board by proposing that they get something which no other professional gets, (if 95 years copyright for a writer, why not 95 years for a patent?) hoping that Ireland will benefit in some way from tax collection. Apple is also strongly represented In Ireland and can presumably afford lobbyists.
The economic downturn and the gradual ending of EU structural funding (supposedly for building railways and roads but actually diverted to building country houses for the rich Irish) is putting a strain on the Irish economy. They need the money
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
2/ Alter the words.
3/ Copyright it and give no credit to the original author.
4/ Charge huge royalty payments for casual use or even small portions.
5/ The estate collects the money for the next 95 years! Happy Birthday To You (c)
Some will argue that it is the "American Way" to do such fencing off of various praries and certainly many have become rich by poineering ways to make money out of what was free before. It is really no more the American way than selling wildcat claims with a single seeded gold nugget for the mark to find or selling the deeds to public bridges. It is disturbing that this behaviour is getting exported to Europe.
Would it be a copyright violation or just truth in reporting to now commence singing the ABBA song, "Money, Money, Money"?
Does that mean that the copyright term will extend further into the past ?
So they should have invested some of the money while they were making it, instead of spending it on Colombian marching powder, groupies and hotel room repairs.
Everyone else has to save for a pension or end up on income support. Why not musicians?
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
how they want to "licence" their works. If some artist want to control their works with some kind of licencing (aka EULA) it is their choise. Of course you cannot restrict the usage of songs which are on eg. the radio. These songs can be considered advertising and as nobody agreed, who heard the song, to the licence you cannot claim licencing fees for them.
In a free market there will be artist who uses restrictive licencing and artists who give away their work for free. Let the free market decide which/who will be the more popular.
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. - Ludwig von Mises
Why is it that when someone actually nails the idea perfectly, they get modded down in some fashion or other. The parent should be +5 insightful off topic :)
He was off topic, but also very very insightful. True workings of the market. Bad press is still good press. Like I kept saying 2 years ago, "Rather than Bash Windows, Promote Linux."
Perhaps now, some of those sales hating geeks out there will get it through their skulls that those "evil" marketing droids might know something after all :)
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
You'd just be committing a tasteless act!
Given that these things are a kind of legal judo, I don't think that that's a big problem. It's a little like the question "What should I do, Sensei, if the assailant doesn't attack?"
Wikileaks, no DNS
The whole point of copyright is to encourage the creative arts. Retroactively extending copyright creates nothing. We get no new works for it.
The only possible justification for extending copyright would be to put it on new works.
50 year copyright means that you'd be retiring on the copyrights if extended only if you did them when you were 15.
95 years means that, on average, if you did the work more than 10 years before your birth, you could expect to still be alive when copyright expires.
So why 50?
Distribution cartels and studios you mean.
Read radical news here
Now I think I have a legitimate right to get all the money I got from my previous jobs paid back twice and retroactively.
Is it just me?
What artist actually sees any royalty payments anyway?
blah blah blah... yadda yadda...
Mod TFA +3 rant fodder
mod this post -2 multiplily (is that a word? no it's just multiply) redundant... and -1 schizophrenicly confused
Of course I didn't RTFA... why would I do that? You really are new here aren't you? Don't let my UID fool you.
Now they (the copyright lobby) want to break that deal by lobbying the gov't to retroactively extend the monopoly by Y years. Now tell me again, why should I respect the deal when the other side doesn't?
Who is going to benefit from this? From what I've read, this was the era in which it was common for record producers to acquire all rights to the song in exchange for a flat fee.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Seems like a long enough time to be recieving royalties. If musicians can't save for their retirement like the rest of us that is their problem. After all, they should have known when their royalties are due to stop and if that didn't equal when they thought they'd be dead then they should have been saving.
... it would give even more power to the European Commission.
They're a bunch of unelected bureaucrats which do not in any way consider the interests of the EU citizens but instead bend over backwards to serve the interests of those corporation which will give them well paid jobs once they've done their time in the European Commission.
(notice how all help-the-industry-f**k-the-consumers proposals of late have come from the commission)
Good thing the Irish brought down the sham attempt at bringing back the EU constitution through the back door that was the Lisbon Treaty.
The funny part is that I'm actual pro-EU and actually feel European. The concept is good, it's just that some EU institutions are degraded and corrupt and need to be eliminated or thoroughly remade.
We need elected legislators instead of these puppets.
I suspect the difference is that laws regarding physical property are strongly tied to the human territorial imperative. Like many other creatures on this planet, we have a strong urge to claim territory as our own, and territorial disputes when they do occur are frequently violent and sometime bloody.
Having a legal structure that helps minimise such disputes makes sense, since it means that we spend less time organising blood vendettas against our neighbours, and more time on constructive activities. Of course, that may depend on what you consider a constructive activity.
On the other hand, there doesn't seem to be any similar deep root territoriality to ideas. In fact, I would argue that converse seems to be true. Human beings have a strong urge to propagate information in all its forms. From jokes and stories, to music, to software - sharing abstractions seems to be a part of our make up.
Which, in my opinion, is why the record labels and studios and software houses are having such a hard time with this. They've coined the term "intellectual property" to try and make it seem as if the human territorial response should apply to information in the same way as it does to tangible assets. But it doesn't; not at the level of human psychology.
And that, so far as I can see, is the major difference. Property laws for tangible assets work with human psychology, and are respected for that reason. Trying to apply those same principles to information is working against human psychology which is why the practice is so widely opposed. Put another way, the first case has a basis in human behaviour, the second one lacks any such basis, and is more of an attempt at social engineering seeking to change human behaviour to suit a relatively small number of people.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Fine by me. It's not the length of the copyright that is the problem, it's how the copyright laws extends into peoples private lives.
In a commercial situation, I support that the artists should have control over their music. But in a private situation, where no one is making a living out of the music, the copyright should not apply.
Just wait till the Scientologists find a way to retroactively apply copyright for the last billion years.
Let's look away from the media companies who has obviously been lobbying for this for a second.
Do musicians really deserve getting paid for that long? I mean, the idea of copyright is to stimulate innovation and that a creator should be able to collect an income on it. But for how long?
Can we really say that musicians will produce less because they won't get paid for more than 45 years for their hit song?
I personally see copyright of music (not inventions) as something that is given as a reward to an artist for enriching some people's lives, but I don't think they should be able to live 95 years off of it.
My conclusion is: They should be forced to work, like the rest of us. Of course, this is assuming that is was the artist who wanted the extended copyright and not the media companies, which are the real winners.
Why can someone sit down, drink, take drugs, have groupies and make money for 95 years from a few songs, whilst other people educate themselves, invent something, and only get the right to make money on their invention for 15-20 years afterwards?
Long copyright terms don't encourage the people with the skills to continually create artistic works of benefit to society and culture. Copyright doesn't exist to benefit the creator of a work of art, it exists to benefit society as a whole by giving incentive to create art.
The actual truth of the matter is that people would actually still create music, art, stories, etc if there was no copyright concept. In addition, the creators would still benefit a lot from creating - people still prefer to see Iron Maiden live rather than tribute bands like High On Maiden, for example. Performances are where the money is for full time bands as well.
All of these people who raked in money from when they were big should have put some aside for their retirement, like EVERYBODY ELSE has to.
What total nonsense. This is not intended for any artists, it is designed to provide more money to the corporations that lobby McCreevy. Victor Hugo would be appalled.
It is high time that copyright stopped being an issue decided by bought and paid for technocrats, and became a political issue.
Songwriters should receive royalties from the use of their songs.
Recording artists should receive royalties from the use of their recordings.
Record companies should receive income when someone buys a record from them.
Problem is, the record companies give the artists such a small cut, which is reduced again by the agents and managers.
50 years is stupid. 95 is idiotic. 30 years would be enough for the recording artists who make a song famous to get a cut from a remake a generation later. I think maybe songwriter copyrights should be for life.
Copyright wasn't meant to allow artists to retire from a single success. It was meant for artists to turn their single success into a means of independent support while they work on the next one. 10 years would be sufficient for this.
Copyrights should not be transferrable. They should not be held by companies. Nor by heirs.
TANSTAAFL GIGO Acronyms to live by!
The more you tighten your grip, MAFIAA (or MAFIEU...), the more potential profits will slip through your fingers.
--frank[at]unternet.org
that's one of the most basic rules of the European law system
The big music companies are always complaining about "stealing" music.
The purpose of copyright was to give a limited monopoly to the creator for a certain time, after which the work was to become public domain.
So by paying the politicians to extend copyright lengths over and over, aren't they using the legal system to steal the public domain music from us?
If you have ever dealt with Richard M Stallman, you would know that the term "intellectual property" drives him crazy. Literally every time it comes up in an email, he will rant about how improper it is. He refuses to use it, and doesn't like to have it used in his presence.
Mmmm, I see. What kind of situation would suit you? Maybe if the European Parliament had veto power on legislation you would say the EU is democratic? Maybe if the said Parliament was elected by the people you would find it OK? Let's go further: imagine the Commission (that you describe as unelected bureaucrats) was in fact composed of politicians chosen by the member states and confirmed by the Parliament and the Parliament could dismiss it anytime: would that be OK for you? Well, this IS the current situation. How more democratic could it be? Is it any less democratic than any country in Europe or elsewhere?
Why not have indefinite copyright?
Many people are exploiting the works of the greats, like Chaucer and Shakespeare, without offering a nickle to their estates. Some of the worse offenders are theaters and schools, who greedily steal this work to enrich the lives of theatergoers and teenagers. Such self-centred and exploitive behaviours have to stop. Copyrights must be extended eternally, and it must be done retroactively so that the estates of great writers from any member of the EU can seek damages for decades, centuries, and even millenia. /sarcasm
Good for you.
I was in France with friends before they voted on the constitution. Every voter was mailed a copy (imagine if they did that in the US with referenda) so I got to take a look at it. It was hundreds of pages of the most turgid legalese imaginable. I couldn't imagine voting for such a thing - how would you know what you were really approving ?
A famous romanian sculptor, Constantin Brancusi (http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantin_Br%C3%A2ncu%C5%9Fi), stated that he doesn't create things.
:-)
... hypocrite?
He said he just looks at a stone... it's all there, already. He then just has to figure out the superfluous parts of the stone and merely remove them
While this is more of a "funny" thing to state, there's some truth to it, and even some depth beyond the fact that sculpture is basically... well... *removing* material.
It's about where creativity comes from: nobody just pops out of his own mom and exclamantes "Hey! I just got an idea! Guess I'm 'creative', heh...". All 'creativity' has a complete range of 'inspirations' lyning at its base and therefore by definition predating it. And 'inspiration' comes, by definition, from outside of the artist's head -- be it from another artits's head, from nature, from society, from somebody's oppinition to another artis's work...
So, in the end, the very act of being 'creative' is already a testimony of having used somebody or something else's work prior to or while creating your own -- be it to a more or less extensive ammount. It's already a proof for the artist infriging somebody else's copyright, to some extent! Now, isn't disallowing everybody any other further use of one's work very
Indeed. The Lisbon treaty was also a legalese mess, so I didn't want it for that reason either. When some politicians speak of the "irish slap in the face" and somehow challenging the will of the people and make Ireland vote again or some such shit, my blood boils.
First of all, not only Ireland rejects the treaty, there are a lot of other countries undecided yet and only the irish people were asked in a referendum, the rest of the countries pushed it through only the respective national parliaments. This was after the previous treaty that was officially labelled the EU constitution was rejected by some countries holding a public referendum before.
So it's not just Ireland, but these idiots somehow feel like pretending only Ireland is the problem and the rest of the 27 countries are all for the new constitution. Bollocks. They even think that the will of the irish people can be ignored if the politicians don't like the outcome, by this standard the will of the people can be ignored in the other countries as well, so they should be made to vote again aswell.
It's not just the commission though, that's making these stupid statements, but elected statesmen aswell. These people should be ashamed of themselves for putting together such a shoddy constitution and instead they try to bully around the few countries that have had the sense to say no. To hell with this.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Please go and learn some recent Irish history. And please note that I am not being anti-Irish. You will see I have confined myself to comments on Irish politicians, priests and gangsters. All my comments can be verified by mainstream sites on the Internet. The difference now is that the Internet, the lack of support among the younger Irish for the Church, and the growing pressure from the EU, are all making it hard to keep the corruption concealed. Which is why the Taoiseach has had to step down.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The facts that you've bundled together there are about as completely wrong as you could get.
Ireland had a declining population for years (not owing to the Troubles; it was the South that was declining, not the North) due to the endemic corruption, lack of personal freedom, and poor educational opportunities.
The corruption was a symptom of a high tax economy which was in turn a symptom of bad economic management during hard times. As far as educational opportunities were concerned Ireland had, in spite of itself and taking into account its size, one of the best education systems in the world - which is seen as one of the major contributors to its recent success.
I'll give you the Iran thing. It's probably not completely far from the truth - certainly up to late '80s.
The two schemes that you mention have absolutely nothing to do with Ireland's success. If I may, I would suggest that it was caused by (1) Technically educated workforce at the same time as the Internet got big (2) Low corporate tax rate (3) English speaking (4) Heavily committed to EU and Euro (5) Very business friendly politically (6) Zero tolerance of corruption and (7) the Good weather?.
If you doubt this, look at what happened to investigative journalists like Guerin and Taoiseachs like Bertie Ahearn.
The criminal gangs in Ireland existed like in any other country. And like in other countries Veronica Guerin was shot because she was investigating them - nothing special there.
Bertie on the other hand had no criminal connections. His problems came because he divorced his wife and was basically taken to the cleaners. Individual businessmen gave him a ton of cash to help him out - unfortunately at the same time Bertie pontificated in the Dail (parliment) that it was reprehensible that any politician should be beholden to outside interests. And unfortunately he got caught - it was illegal, but not in the 'Criminal gangs' sense.
The upshot is that shills like McCreevy are trying to keep the artists on board by proposing that they get something which no other professional gets, (if 95 years copyright for a writer, why not 95 years for a patent?) hoping that Ireland will benefit in some way from tax collection. Apple is also strongly represented In Ireland and can presumably afford lobbyists.
Charlie McCreevy is just doing his job - as Commissioner for Internal Markets, and most other countries reckon he's doing OK at it. He's applying his own philosophy to it which is very much pro IP rights - which is why he's a darling of Microsoft and the Record Companies. (I'm not saying I agree with him).
As you say in Ireland there is no tax for artists - but that means no revenue for government, so that point is a contradiction. There also aren't any record companies her - so you're 0 for 2 there.
The economic downturn and the gradual ending of EU structural funding (supposedly for building railways and roads but actually diverted to building country houses for the rich Irish) is putting a strain on the Irish economy. They need the money.
The downturn in Ireland is, like everywhere else, caused by a combination of High Oil Prices, Low Consumer Confidence and a Global Credit Crunch. Nothing to do with structural funding, which did make a lot of people rich, as you would expect - but not in the corrupt way you are suggesting.
Ireland needs to pay for a very high public service bill - but that will need to be achieved by cutting the bill, not by getting a few more quid off an aging Bono.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
If you own a song...
If you own a program...
Who you gonna call?
McGreevy...
Repeat
They shouldn't. No one should be paid for doing nothing. They should save their money for retirement like the rest of us.
Copyright needs to be reduced or abolished, not extended!
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
While I feel the same - do you really think elections make a difference? Our elected officials rape us all the same, the main difference is that they employ a few PR experts to undo the damage, but as someone else said in a different thread: All we really choose is who rapes us, not if.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The Register had this yesterday, but with a different slant on the proceedings.
In summary, this is not about the songs but the performers themselves.See here, here and here
Perhaps the only good point is that the retroactive extensions won't take effect for any works which aren't marketed in the first year after the extension.
There is an easy fix for that. As a publisher, simply market your entire catalog. You don't even need to print the music. Just price it ridiculously high and make sure that you publish a list of all your individual items in your catalog somewhere. Copyright extended.
The only people screwed are individuals and tiny publishers that don't know enough to "market" their materials, or who don't know what they have. As a citizen, it becomes impossible to determine what is protected by copyright.
This is a multi-million euro gift to the large publishers, and near zero to everyone else.
Without laws hampering the freedom of movement an employee could just steal all the computers.
There's still contract law too. Granted it wouldn't entirely fix the situation as once the code was released you couldn't stop its propagation (you can't really now but the people are infringing international law by distributing it and so there is some deterrent). You could sue the employee for the loss based on a contractual agreement though (you'd be unlikely to win the value of the software back unless that employee was rich).
Surely losing your home and livelihood through breech of contract would be an equal deterrent to losing your home and livelihood through copyright infringement?
It's people like you who force the Rolling Stones to stay in business until Jagger has to come on stage with a walker.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Basically they are saying that musicians are not responsible enough to have retirement plans? If you make money for your whole career (just like the rest of us) and then retire and suddenly find you have run out... is that not just poor planning? That could happen to any professional person who plans their retirement badly.
I won't bother to get into whether it is right that they should earn for the first 45 off one piece of work, that is a whole new debate.
If there argument is to protect the artists then they should have a period in which the rights (save moral rights) can be used as property (say 15 years) and then a period in which the ownership is restricted to the artist (say 5 years) but will enter the public domain without a registration. The artist can license the rights but not give them up completely, so they would retain rights to perform the work for example.
Seriously though they may not go for these periods, if it were genuinely to protect artists then the right would have to revert to those same artists.
From a fair use essay I wrote:
Society benefits the most when something that is created is in the public domain, meaning that nobody holds a copyright. Society, as a whole, owns the work. Shakespeare's plays, most of the writings of Mark Twain, and music composed by Johann Sebastian Bach are in the public domain. Everyone is free to create alternate versions, perform them, or even make a movie with them without getting permission or paying royalties.
However, society also recognizes that people might not have any reason to write books, make movies, or sing songs if everyone else can immediately copy their work. Copyright is a carrot offered by society to help promote the creation of new works. When you get down to it, society is saying, "We understand that there must be some reason for you to create. If you create something, then cannot benefit from it, you will not have a reason to create more works. So, to encourage you, here is a limited period of protection so that you might benefit."
Emphasis on the limited.
Andrew Borntreger
Champion of cinematic disasters
What is always lost in these arguments is the reason copyright exists. It is to provide a limited amount of time of exclusive use of a work as a means of reimbursing the artist, and it is balanced against the rights of others to make derivative works and promote creativity. . The music companies seem to think it is purely an exclusive license for all of eternity. . And as the article points out, after 50 years there really is very little value in most works. Record/CD/mp3 sales of songs that old are very slow, and the money in it for the artists is minimal. It's all for the profit of the record labels. . "Oh my god, CD sales suck! How can we extend our failing business model to squeeze more money from our crap?" -RIAA stooge
The summory[sic] makes a stupid statement about getting royalties 95 years after they stop working. Did they even read their own summory[sic]???? It's about extending it 45 years because say you work 60 years, common with musicians, then retire you still get paid for your earlier work.
Your math is as bad as your spelling. Let's be generous and say a musician starts his professional career at the age of 15. If he works for 60 years as you say, then he retires at 75 (possible I guess). The 45 year extension means he can still collect royalties when he's 110 (despite advances in medical science, I can't imagine most hard-living musicians are going to live that long). Of course that's just for the work they did at 15. They can collect royalties on the work they did at age 40 when they're 135, and they can collect on the work they did just before their retirement when they're 170. Tell me again how this makes sense?
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Sorry, something is wrong here, what do they mean the artists in their seventies stop getting paid?? Copyright lasts for the _life of the author_ plus a period ( 50 years in Canada, 70 in Brazil, I think it's 70 in Europe too ).
If so this is REALLY not aimed at benefitting the authors. Sounds like they want to extend copyright to life plus 95. That'd be great for the authors buried/burned remains, indeed. Oh, and to the living, breathing, caviar-eating publishers, but that's just a little thing. :-)
Send your spendthrift head of state this
its the same thing disney did when its copyrights were up onmickey mouse they changed the law so they could profit for twenty more years whats the point?
Don't be silly. If I make something, I own it. No one has any rights to it unless and until I say so. Then, I decide how and when some or all of those rights are transferred, not you. Copyright didn't create those rights, it just recognizes and protects something that has always existed.
The examples you cite from ancient Rome and Asia, etc., are specious. One might as well justify slavery by arguing that the Romans were quite happy with it. Human behavior is no arbiter of right and wrong.
Prove to me how you magically have a right to anything I make and don't want you to have.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Really? Actually, the constitution would have transferred more power to the directly elected European Parliament. The EP would be put on equal footing with the Council, and get final say over the budget.
While it's true that the constitution would have failed to reduce the powers of the European Commision, at least it didn't get any more. And there would have been quite a bit more transparency in both the Commission and the Counsil.
So, it was an improvement.
If anything, I think the media has not been doing their job. Even though people directly elect the EP, you'd hardly ever know it, because the media hardly discusses what's going on in the EP - good or bad. How are we supposed to keep our MEPs accountable if we have to make such an effort to know what's going on.
Properly explaining and digesting the treaties and constitution would also have helped. The constitution was ridiculously long compared to the the US one for instance, but it would have helped if it was properly distilled and discussed in the media.
I think they should've probably made a small document with the spirit and general principles of the constitution in human language on a few pages, with appropriate references to the details in a separate document that simplify and retake all the old, existing treaties.
I guess it's too late for that now. It'll be death by a million treaties now.
McCreevey's most compelling argument for the extension is that, in his view, "Copyright represents a moral right of the performer to control the use of his work and earn a living from his performance, at least during his lifetime."
So if I'm a landscape gardner, and I work on your garden, I should be able to control your flowerbeds for the rest of my life?
When these works were created, the copyright holders were granted a certain time of exclusivity over this abstract creation. After this period, the exclusitivity would ceise and the public could utilise them as they pleased.
The idea was that this would provide incentive for people to create works of art, literature, music, etc. Many people accepted this idea, knowing that after some years of exclusivity it would again go back to the public, so that they could be enjoyed, reproduced and built upon as anyone saw fit. Without this right people like Shakespeare and Disney would not have been able to produce their works without permission and licensing.
If the period is extended retroactively for works beyond what the original period was, this is essentially taking rights away from the public for no reason other than to line the pockets of the already super wealthy.
Can anyone actually reasonably argue that further incentives in terms of extensions of exclusivity periods would generate better works of art and literature.
use VBA as the NECESSARY part of their business process? It's used as one of the major reasons for having to have MSOffice, that it has VBA, so it must be pretty damn important.
But nobody buys that off the shelf, do they, they write it in-house.
They aren't buying their most important software at all, they're writing it.
and I can do whatever I want with it. Even make more copies and even sell them.
You can make copies of my copies too. Knock yourself out.
Do Chairmakers receive compensation when Ballmer enjoys the chair?
Or, removing rights from The People retroactively?
That is all.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
In a clear case of lying the EU commission would like to tell you that Copyright is not a monopoly!
http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/08/508&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en#fnB3
That's not what I learnt in my time at UKIPO. Seriously that makes me so angry.
The rest of the reasoning in the FAQs isn't a great deal better and includes a deal of less obvious deception.
They make the point that revenues on _physical_ sales have been "characterised by a fast decline in physical sales (- 30% over the past five yeas[sic])". Notice there's a little word "physical", so internet sales aren't counted.
Then they make the point that: "One study[2] concluded that there was no systematic difference between prices of in-copyright and out-of copyright sound recordings. ". Again they don't note that downloading a copy of an out of copyright work will be free at source (barring network costs) for any work uploaded. You'd even be able to go into an internet cafe and download a load of recordings and burn them on a CD. That'd be maybe £2.50 for 200 songs? Where can I buy that in a shop?
The logic that concludes that one group having a 50 year term and another a 70 year term is inequitable is probably right. The conclusion that you should thus extend the term to 95 years is a vile indictment of the depths to which the claws of big business have sunk into the EU Commission.
To top it all they dismiss out of hand the Gowers Report and cunningly break the link - see here http://www.ipo.gov.uk/policy/policy-issues/policy-issues-gowers.htm (note to Google, the top hit is a broken link too!). See the third recommendation on "Balance" which says keep the 50 year term.
In return for these increased rights, will we get increased benefit to the public, ability to format shift (Recommendation 8 under "Flexibility" in Gowers above), etc., don't hold your breath.
The other report mentioned is not even available as a [broken] link, presumably it's not open to public scrutiny as it was commissioned by the BPI (a British RIAA type group, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Phonographic_Industry).
We need elected legislators instead of these puppets.
Indeed.
That being said, have you actually read the proposed agreement? I have - even though I didn't get to vote on it -, and what you're saying doesn't actually make sense. Making the EU more democratic is precisely what the agreement would've accomplished. (Not that it would've made the EU perfect, of course - far from it -, but at least it would've made it better than it is now.)
If you voted against it, you fell for the cony-catchers, friend: those who wanted Ireland to keep on receiving billions of Euros and those who wanted to keep Ireland from, say, having to legalise abortions or grant equal rights to gay folks.
You're not very clear there. Do you mean "But the record companies' artists! we must protect them! and coddle them," which is what you actually said? I suspect you really meant "But they're artists! we must protect them! and coddle them!"
Did you say what you meant or did you tryst you're spill chucker wit out locking ate it?
If in fact you meant "they're artists" and you're a programmer, that explains why all of today's programs are so buggy.
As to your sig "TWITTER - the #1 annoying thing on the internet" I disagree. It's illiterates who are the most annoying... oh, I see. You're right.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Yeah, right, and after a few millennia of incessant earnings, the dead poets might even decide to write again, ;-) all thanks to the simple motivation provided by excessive IPRs.
Just like singers and songwriters aged 100+ will restart their careers from retirement, with great new works to surpass their legendary Woodstock performances from the 1960s, once copyright is extended, preferably indefinitely.
Let's go further: imagine the Commission (that you describe as unelected bureaucrats) was in fact composed of politicians chosen by the member states and confirmed by the Parliament and the Parliament could dismiss it anytime: would that be OK for you?
Sorry, but have to hold you there. Having politicians nominated by other politicians you voted for does not make the commission in any way democratic, despite what their apologists claim. We all know that national elections are fought on the basis of whatever immediate national concerns are prevalent at that point - not about what commissioner is going to be chosen.
McCreevy is a case in point - he was shipped off to Europe by Bertie because he became a liability to Fianna Fail on the domestic front - hardly ideal qualifications for the European post.
The Lisbon treaty went some way towards re-balancing powers between the commission and the parliament, it's a pity it didn't (at the least) revamp the commission entirely.
I agree fully with the parent and GP here, I'm Irish and like the idea of the EU, but lately the only thing the EU has been pushing for is more security for the rich and themselves.
Mark Twain didn't understand, so I hardly expect the eurocrats. The purpose of patents & copyright is to stimulate creation. Not provide a revenue stream for his daughters daughters. The creative act has to have some payout in prospect. Even with low rates-of-return, that flattens before 20 years. Which is why patents last about that. Today, I don't think any commercial publishing project with a payout of longer than 5 years would "sell" even with 100 year copyright. So why grant the extra 80-95 years? It _does_not_ stimulate creation.
This yet another case of strong, concentrated interests corrupting legislators/bureuacrats away from sworn-service to the admitedly dilute interests of the people.
And which Commissioner pressed for software patents in the EU? McCreevy, that's who. And when did he do it? Around the time Microsoft was building its R&D centre, that's when.
The parent post can be described as putting a good face on some dubious behaviour. Anybody who wants to know if I have a case (basically that McCreevy is a shill for specifically Irish interests rather than doing his supposed job which is remove impediments to the internal market) is invited to use Google and their own resources to see which of us is right, or at least more right, and whether in fact corruption in Ireland is "low". As the parent poster admits, businessmen gave the Taoiseach a "ton of money" to help him out of difficulties. You may choose to believe that Ireland is full of selfless businessmen who thrust piles of Euros at anybody having a hard time, or you might not.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
only the irish people were asked in a referendum
My understanding is that it's not legal to take any other course of action. The treaty requires an amendment to our constitution and that requires a public referendum.
A very interesting proposal. I like the way you've balanced it so artists can make a living for a period of time, but to make a lifetime career of it, they would have to keep on producing. The 10-15 year timeframe sounds about right because it can take a decade to really introduce a new work of art to the world. We can get things published much more quickly now, but individual people's capacity for change hasn't improved at the same pace. It still takes a long time for things to be really widely adopted.
I would consider the provision for permanent attribution to be just good manners among fellow artists. For example, I am a hymn writer, and often use texts from hundreds of years ago. I frequently need to alter them a bit to fit our modern ears, and always attribute the original author along with a note about my alteration.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Sorry, but have to hold you there. Having politicians nominated by other politicians you voted for does not make the commission in any way democratic, despite what their apologists claim. We all know that national elections are fought on the basis of whatever immediate national concerns are prevalent at that point - not about what commissioner is going to be chosen.
Well, on the other hand the Commission can be sacked by the Parliament at any time. So in this regard the situation is exactly the same as the one in most member states: the Commission needs the approval of the democratically elected Parliament to stand. (I fail to see how this is any less democratic than the situation in, say, Belgium where the unelected King appoints the Premier.)
By the way, my point was to say that the commissioners are politicians, not bureaucrats, as some people insist.
Do Chairmakers receive compensation when Ballmer enjoys the chair?
No.. Just the guy who repairs the wall.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
Copyright lasting 95 years is a tad long. I mean, most artists are going to be long dead before their copyright runs out. Except maybe . . . Keith Richards. ;-)
From Thomas Jefferson's letter to Isaac McPherson,August 13, 1813:
...It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,)
that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their
inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to
their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of
any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be
singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to
inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the
subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate
property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law,
indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men
equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who
occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property
goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is
given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if
an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of
natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If
nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of
exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an
idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps
it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into
the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess
himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses
the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who
receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without
lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light
without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to
another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man,
and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and
benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire,
expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any
point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our
physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.
Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society
may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an
encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but
this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of
the society, without claim or complaint from any body...
The Full Text of the letter.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
When a musician releases a hit, they make more money (mostly through touring/performing) than a normal person makes for completing a project at a company. If they want more money they should complain to the studios to release a better cut. Why should they continue to receive money their whole life from one project (which actually mostly goes to the studio anyway).
Plus, a lot of musicians sample other music in making theirs. By having these long copyrights you have to pay royalties to use other music in your music. For someone just starting out this may preclude them from release material that they could otherwise do.
The idea of copyright is you lease your work from the public domain for a set period of time to use it in order to profit. After that it belongs to the public domain. If you can't make enough money on it, maybe your work just isn't good enough.
Unfortunately, "limited" is now being taken in comparison to the heat death of the universe, instead of in comparison with the length of time a person could reasonably be expected to live as it used to be.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
This corporate handout that rips off the people is exactly the kind of EU tyranny that makes people vote to stop the current versions of the European Constitution whenever the people actually get to vote on it. Like the people of Ireland just did to stop the "Lisbon Treaty" that is the latest package of "merde".
--
make install -not war
Maybe the song didn't make enough money in its first 50 years to keep the artist from living on the street or allow them to set aside a bit of money for retirement LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE does, so adding another 45 years will make all the difference?
This is a cash grab for studios by retroactively "stealing" (yes, stealing -- that's *their* usage) from the public domain. That's the whole story here. If people actually wanted to improve artists' lot as they retire, then they'd do something more helpful, such as automatically doubling any royalties from the sales in the last 10 years before the copyright expires, or returning all transferred copyrights to the artist for renegotiation -- now that they know something is popular they can cut a better deal. Merely extending the term of what is often a bad deal wouldn't do much except preserve the studio's revenue stream long after the artist is dead. What's the point of that?
"there's a huge difference between how IP and real property are treated. There is no double standard."
That difference IS the double standard.
Proponents of IP want the benefits of property ownership but without the cost (which you so rightly pointed out as being the ongoing taxation of that property in return for protection of its nature as privately held.)
This world isn't black and white, and neither is the EU commision. Yes, they have done bad things ( thou I'd like to remind you that this is a proposal, not yet a law ) but they have also done a lot of good. They are one of the few authorities in the world that tries to restrict Microsoft's monopoly. They have taken serious measures towards limiting global warming, and numerous EU regulations to limit exposure to toxic materials and substances has come from the EU.
You may argue that the goo dthings the EU has brought would have happened anyway, but the same may be said about the bad things. As with most things in this world things are not quite black and white, yet people find it a lot easier to complain than recognise what has been done correctly.
not even cold November rain?
Does it matter if you can read it? The US Constitution says copyrights should last for a limited time, yet during my entire life a copyright has never expired. The courts can interpret the Constitution however they like, even if the wording is clear as day. At least people in the EU have a history of standing up to big business. We sold our government out to them years ago.
america has elected officials and look what kind of mess we are in.
the truth is that human character imperfections (not caring so much about others) will ultimately destroy any form of human instituted government.
if you don't believe this yet... watch in total wonder...
On the off chance that someone might like actual information about this, instead of the random uninformed speculation most people seem to be basing their comments on, here is the official FAQ for this proposed law.
Now that we have this thing called the 'Internet'?
there is no god but truth, and reality is its prophet
As a Celt who used to be a Reform Druid when I served in the Canadian Army (true story), I claim that most European music is violating my intellectual property by using music my ancestors first created.
Oh, and you owe us cash for wearing pants too.
Please send all the back payments owed to every Celt worldwide, preferably in Euro coins.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I don't think copyright was about enticing people to create, rather making it more economically viable. To make a significant work takes many months. That in turn takes money to pay for materials, food, and a place to work and live; making the creative work is an investment. To justify such an investment, there must be reasonable expectation of at least breaking even. The temporary monopoly increases the chance of making a reasonable return, since you'll be the only one producing and selling copies of the work. There are other ways of funding creative works, of course, that don't require any government policing.
Some albums still sell quite well after 40 years (Sgt. Pepper, DSOM).
So, If your programs are still in use in another 40 years, I would expect you to send an invoice. But I highly doubt you're that good, so I wouldn't worry about it if I were you.
Now, and go fuck yourself.
For whatever it's worth, as an American, I'm truly sorry that our government is doing crap like this. I don't know what I can do to stop it given the state of American politics, but I am trying to do whatever little good I can.
Well, the mechanism for enticing creation and publication is to make it more economically viable. There are other, 'natural' mechanisms too (e.g. fame, art-for-art's-sake, patronage, etc.), which are sometimes enough (see e.g. all works created before 1710, and many since).
To make a significant work takes many months.
That's not true. If we're measuring significant in terms of economic value (since that what you're trying to justify) it can take anywhere from a minute to decades. Plenty of things are made much faster, sometimes with the aid of drugs, or at least lots of coffee. 'On the Road' took three weeks to write. 'The Little Shop of Horrors' took two days to film (and ironically, Roger Corman didn't think the movie would ever make money beyond its initial release, so he never bothered to get a copyright for it). Marcel Duchamp once famously bought a urinal, signed his name to it, and put it in a show. Couldn't've taken more than minute of actual work. And let's not even think about daily newspapers. I'm sure the reporters didn't have months to write the majority of each day's edition.
To justify such an investment, there must be reasonable expectation of at least breaking even.
Ha! Authors are infamously optimistic. The vast majority of works never make anything at all. Of the remainder, the vast majority don't make much. There's a good reason that we have a stereotype of the starving artist living in a garret, never getting famous, never getting successful, never getting paid.
Besides, copyrights don't guarantee that a work will make money. They merely act as a lens, concentrating whatever money there is to be made into the hands of the copyright holder. If a work is a flop, then the copyright holder gets a large percentage of the nothing that the work is worth.
-- 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.
If your local politician is one that favours the longer terms and they refuse to consider any arguments then the best approach is that if 95 years is better than 50, then 200 should be even better. Its only going to take one of these idiots to fall for that argument and introduce something to have Disney (and their other owners) screaming at them for going too far but about 200 years is where many of Disney's copyrighted works would then require them to pay other people who get nothing according to today's terms.
I haven't seen this point mentioned, so I think I should point out this:
This planned extension of copyright terms won't affect the musical works themselves (lyrics, melodies, ...) but sound recordings of these works. This means the copyright for a certain composition will still last until 70 years after the death of its creator, while the recording itself (e.g. as a track on a CD or a video of a public performance) will be copyrighted for 95 years.
Knowing the MAFIAA, I somehow doubt that a significant portion of these recordings are copyrighted by the artists themselves, but probably by a RIAA member company.