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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
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.
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.
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.
Yes, If commercial companies want to use 45 year old technology that was GPL'd why not? Just think, Fortran iv would just be out of copyright now. Next year we can look forward to DEC PDP-8 becoming public domain. See timeline of computing.
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.
Sure. If someone wants to use a suddenly public-domain Linux 0.1, they can go right ahead. The current version will still be under copyright and available only under the terms of the GPL. Oh, and the Linux name is trademarked, not copyrighted, so Linus and his successors retain that indefinitely.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
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.
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
... 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.
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!
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?
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
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
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.
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
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
The whole point of copyright is to encourage the creative arts. Retroactively extending copyright creates nothing. We get no new works for it.
The whole point of copyright was to encourage the creative arts. Now it is all about Asia. Asia is a huge emerging market for the EU and the US. Extending intellectual property is a reaction to the new wealth found in that region.
The US and the EU cannot compete with the now-strong manufacturing base of Asia. The only thing we can sell to that region is Mickey Mouse (copyright), Coca Cola (trademark), and Boeing (patents).
Asia does not need the US or the EU to create any of those products. So if they do, we want them to "license the rights" from us.
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
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.
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.
That is all.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
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
No, "the parent post" is presenting the facts about Ireland.
It is clear that Ireland will not benefit in any way from a 95 year copyright extension on music rights - in fact less so as there is no revenue to be gained from artists who pay 0% tax.
I'm sure - like a lot of people on /., myself included - you dislike McCreevy for his stance on Software Patents. But to say that he is a shill for Ireland based on one case is stretching it. I will not disagree that the Microsoft investment was influenced by his support for Software Patents, but McCreevy holds those views anyway when Irish interest are not served, as we can see clearly from TFA.
Ireland scores very well on international (non-)corruption tables.
BTW Ireland is not necessarily full of selfless businessman, the individuals in question were living in Manchester at the time.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed