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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?
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
The concept of "intellectual property" is the problem. The phrase was made up to make it seem like a right rather than a temporary government granted monopoly.
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
Difference 1: If I graze my cattle on your ranch, you will not be able to make use of your ranch - but if I sing a song that you wrote, you will still be able to sing that song.
Difference 2: If you sell me your ranch, the ranch is mine to do with as I please. If you sell me your song, shouldn't the song be mine to do with as I please? After some profitability, songs and other intellectual property should go into the public domain, especially if a large portion of the public have paid for it.
Pirates are holy beings whose dwindling numbers has caused global warming. It's simple cause and effect.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
the difference is, if i take your physical property, you have less.
if i take your intellectual property, you lose nothing.
bytes are not atoms.
-I only code in BASIC.-
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.
No it means that it applies to works that are already in existence. So for example I own a number of audio books of classic works. The words spoken by the actors on the CD's are long out of copyright. However the recording itself has a 50 year term. When I purchased that audio book I entered into a contract, part of which was based on the fact that the copyright in the recording would expire within my lifetime.
This proposal would change the existing contract of purchase to make me materially worse off. This makes it retroactive.
This proposal however has to get approval from all 27 member countries, which is a tall order given that some, such as the UK have expressed previously that they saw no reason to extend copyrights on recordings.
Land is limited natural resource. Art is created.
If we had perpetual copyrights, we would have to pay royalties for anything created centuries ago. Think about Mozart heirs asking to pay for 9th symphony or Dante's super duper grandson still controlling rights of Divine Comedy. All these copyright extensions are moving copyrights to that direction.
Your house is not the same as your great grandfather bought. Every generation invested in that house.
Actually you don't own your property in the truest sense of the word (yes technically I acknowledge that you own and possibly have possession of it). Ultimately the government owns your land. Just stop paying the land or property taxes and this point will be made abundantly clear. Now if a copyright holder had to pay a yearly fee based on the value (either intrinsic, or perhaps market or realized, something along those lines) of the work in question to keep the copyright I'd be a lot more supportive of copyright laws.
Maybe the concept of 'property' is the underlying problem? The problems with such a thing as landowners are obvious (Feudal age anyone)?
If I graze my cattle on your ranch, you will not be able to make use of your ranch - but if I sing a song that you wrote, you will still be able to sing that song.
Depends on what you see as the purpose of the property. If the purpose of the ranch is to graze cattle, yes, it's being denied to you but if you just use it as a vacation home where's the damage? If the purpose of the song is that you just want to sing it there's no damage but if the purpose was to make money then someone else sharing free copies of it make you unable to do so.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
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
Even a yearly renewal after a certain point would be nice. The artist (not the record company) would have to fill out some form every year to retain rights.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
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.
No, plagiarism is fraud. That's what's bad about it: taking credit for someone else's work means you're lying to everyone who reads it.
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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.
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!
that's one of the most basic rules of the European law system
but according to the gp, that someone is losing nothing since there is no physical property involved in this case.
Yes, that's correct. Plagiarism is wrong for reasons that have nothing to do with losing anything.
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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 sell me your song, shouldn't the song be mine to do with as I please?
It is. The musician sells his song to the music studio, who gets paid market price (a shame the supply side is so saturated), and it is then the studio's to do as they please, including charging others for the *service* of providing legally authorized media on which to listen to the songs.
I'll note that many slashdotters are against this situation, that "oh no! poor creative artists are free to sell their commercial interest in works to non-natural persons!" The only thing I see wrong with it is that the studios are an illegal cartel, and that (not being a natural right) copyright lasts for far too long.
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.
yet if that property is intellectual rather than physical, there is huge outcry.
Why the double standard?
Because intellectual "property" isn't. It has none of the elements that make up "property" in physical things. Most importantly, it is not exclusive.
People fend off, fight for and die for land because if you use it, then I can't. That's not true of music, we can both have a copy of the same song and be happy.
That's why the double standard.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
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?
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Now tell me again, why should I respect the deal when the other side doesn't?
bingo. that's what kids today see. they know that the other guys have been dishonest for a long, long time. so why should they follow 'their' rules when its not a fair game from the start?
I stopped buying 'new' music a long time ago. lately, I've rediscovered buying used cd's and ripping them myself. not only does this give me control over the drm and bit-quality, but it also keeps ALL the money away from the entertainment industry. when I buy a used cd from a private individual (amazon, etc) - its true the artists don't get a cut, but AT LEAST neither does the 'official chain' of cash flow; ie the pigs at the media companies. I'm getting new 'content' but I'm also depriving them of their cut. that makes me happy; or, happier.
until the industry changes ITS ACT, I will do all I can to avoid lining your pockets with my money. there are ways to have content and yet avoid the normal channels that they want to force you into. reject the system - rebel and send them a message!
they can buy all the laws they want; but we are not powerless in this. there are ways to fight back.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
That is all.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
bingo. that's what kids today see.
I very much doubt that the average kid sees anything other than the chance to get stuff for free with little or no fear of being caught. In fact given that it's so prevalent, I expect they don't even consciously register that they're doing anything wrong (in any sense, morally or legally)
Honestly, in my experience very few people outside of slashdot think about it *at all*. As much as we like to think that most people are sticking it to the man because of industry corruption and deal-breaking, it really isn't like that.
It's official. Most of you are morons.