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20-Year Copyright Extensions Coming To Europe
unlametheweak points out a story at Ars Technica which begins:
"After a UK government-led commission said that the current 50-year term for musical copyrights was fine, and the government last year publicly agreed that there was no need to extend the term, culture minister Andy Burnham yesterday made the logical follow-up announcement that yes, the government would now push for a 20-year extension on copyright. Turns out, it's the moral thing to do. Actually, by framing the issue as a 'moral case,' Burnham gets to sidestep the entire issue of logic. Critics have already begun to charge that he is ignoring actual evidence and the well-regarded conclusions of the Gowers Report (PDF), not to mention previous government policy. But when the issue becomes a moral one and the livelihood of aging performers is at stake, it's suddenly easier to avoid cost/benefit analysis."
Anything that means that Cliff Richard and Paul McCartney don't have to release more christmas songs to get money should be welcomed.
"Welcome to our world. We are the wasted youth. And we are the future too." Yes, I know these are stupid lyrics.
* The majority of performers could gain as little as 50 cents per year from sales related to the proposed extension, set against as much as â4m going to each major record label
I own stock in music labels you insenstive clod. Musicians get all the hotties, even when they're poor! We fat cats are, well fat and ugly, we need the money to get laid! Geeze!
* The Directive threatens to actually decrease the amount performers receive in airplay royalties in their lifetime, as payments are transferred from artists at the beginning of their careers to the estates of dead performers
Keith Richards has to make a living while he's still animate.
* The proposal to set up a fund for session musicians (who otherwise would not benefit from the term extension at all, because of the contracts they originally signed with record labels) is low on detail. Thereâ(TM)s a real risk that the small amount record labels are compelled to set aside for this fund will be swallowed by admin costs before it gets to musicians.
Secretaries have to support the illegitimate children that were fathered by the musicians they slept with when they were young and pretty. Think of the children this law would save! Just, think of the children!
See, there is a moral reason for this law!
Yes, It's called Cliff Richard
Does Europe have their own version of Steamboat Willy?
The thing I don't get is reference to Europe in the summary and the headline.
Yes, UK is part of Europe (though most of us on the continent think them as barely Europeans and as far as I have understood they think the same way) but in this world situation saying that something is coming to Europe would imply that EU is now doing something.
And well, there has been all kinds of suggestions (that haven't passed) about extending copyright in EU too (such as extending it to 95 years) but as far as I understood from TFA this has nothing to do with them...
What is happening with the world? Seriously..?
It seems the politicians are just having a nervous BREAKDOWN all over the place. If it's not about increasing surveillance, it's fighting terrorism, increasing copyright timespan and frankly, just about anything that's NOT BENEFICIAL OF CITIZENS AT ALL.
I'm so tired of all this. I was seriously thinking of giving up the fighting but instead I joined the Pirate Party (Sweden). They push their core ideas such as integrity, freedom of expression and freedom to fileshare copyrighted works (that one I don't care that much about).
I absolutely have lost interest of the politics concerning e.g. healthcare, economics, welfare, defense, infrastructure and what have you. I'm 100% focused on the integrity issues - because, if we have no private life, what the fuck do we have exactly?
Each and every one party in Sweden is pushing their agenda on the surveillance except for the Pirate Party which is non-negotiably against. Parties traditionally very concerned with integrity issues have been completely HIJACKED and are now pro-surveillance. Just the past year Sweden is about to:
1) Let the state wiretap the entire country (with un-supportable claims that this will only be done to connections crossing the border)
2) Give copyright-holders the privilege to ask an ISP for the identity behind an IP-address (what the FUCK? Swedish RIIA)
3) Implement the EU directive to store traffic data (SMS, MMS, E-mail, web, telephone, cellphone) at the very least 6 months. By the way, this includes position data - now everyone carrying a cellphone can be tracked (at least 6 months back - do you remember where you were 6 months back??). Brilliant! Swedish politicians wants to go further than this and require 1-2 years of storage.
I've had it. The politicians are so fucking ignorant that I just want to vomit. This state is in a state of hijack and it's fucking time to revolt. The Pirate Party is gaining voters.
Earlier today I sent an e-mail to the Swedish Security Police (something akin of an investigative police concering itself with e.g. terrorism) asking its head judicial if they have completely lost their mind. Haven't received an answer yet.
This whole surveillance thing makes me queasy. I cannot for the life of me begin to understand the politicians reasoning for fucking up this (past) democracy like this. :-((
Fight for your digital freedom, join the EFF *now*: http://www.eff.org/support/
You are exactly right, your time would have been better put towards something you enjoy or benefit from in some way. To be sure, no government in history -- democracy or otherwise -- has ever significantly, permanently, and willingly reduced its level of power or revenue. Governments only get bigger, more powerful, and more expensive over their lifetimes, and if history is any indication, this will always be the case. The only things which can cause a government to reduce its level of power are (1) war, or (2) economic collapse -- neither of which are desirable from either perspective (the ruled or the ruler).
So what's in that for those of us who would prefer a government strictly limited in power and revenue? Absolutely nothing. Personally, I have come to the conclusion that life is too short to get hung up on something that will never happen. That's why I simply don't play the game -- after all, THEY are the ones who want to control me, not the other way around. I don't want to control anybody, so why would I participate in a game where the prize is control (the special "right" to employ coercion as your means) over others?
All we can do is keep a low profile and try to enjoy the limited time we have on this planet, while the power-hungry fight it out among themselves.
If we don't extend copyright, what incentive will dead authors have to create?
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
I work in software and my company is about to be RIF'd by 15%.
so, not only do I _NOT_ get any royalties from the lines of code I wrote, but I get my job outsourced and then I get fired.
cobra runs out and if I can't afford healthcare, I could go broke and be homeless.
is society taking care of ME at all?
hardly!
why the fuck should society take care of aging musicians, then?
it aint right and we all know it.
I put as much sweat and talent into my code as any damned musician does, these days. why do THEY have lobbies to grant them legal powers to harass customers and sue them but us programmers can't do squat?
it aint right. kids today see that and so they rebel. more power to you, kids; the future lies with you and not the old guys..
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
So glad to hear you say that, Mr. Burnham. I have a few letters here for you. Here's the royalty bill from the farmer who grew the corn that you consumed on March 17, 1983 (after all, he created something of real value to you -- without it and other food like it, you would have starved.) Here's the bill from the guy you hired to paint your house on June 23, 1996. The other seventy-three bags of bills like them are waiting just outside your front door -- your prompt payment will be appreciated.
Sigh. Starting at paragraph 6, halfway down the page: "In any event, a push for term extension is being made across Europe. While the UK says it will work to extend musical copyright from 50 to 70 years, the European Union is considering a plan (backed by Commissioner Charlie McCreevy) to extend musical copyrights to 95 years."
Property is theft.
Never, ever in history. Except perhaps just recently in the very country we are discussing, when Gordon Brown came to power. In his first act as prime minister, he transferred several significant powers to the Commons.
Why don't you, especially as an American, stop the right-wing scaremongering over the politics of a country which you have no more intimate an understanding of than your daily newspaper? Instead you could work on grass-roots campaigns, perhaps get involved in politics, or a number of other constructive things you could do if you stopped assuming that all government is bad and unfixable.
When you buy a car and don't have all the money at once, you get a loan and you pay it off in small amounts at regularly scheduled intervals. WHEN you buy the car, the number of intervals and the amount of money that you are spending for the car is fixed. You and the seller agree on a price. That price is the number of car payments that you are going to make. When you have finished making all those payments, you own the car.
If, right before your last scheduled payment, the seller says that you must now make ANOTHER 20 or 30 payments in order to own the car, then he is stealing your money by breaking the legal sales contract. Which said X number of payments for ownership of the car.
Copyright works the same way. The owner of the copyright gets fixed payments for a fixed number of years for allowing the 'property' to be used. After that period of time, the 'property' passes into the public domain, where no one has to pay the copyright owner for using the 'property'.
By changing the number of years that an item is in copyright, the lawmakers are breaking a legal contract between the public and the copyright owner. They are stealing money from the public and giving it to the (what is supposed to be the former) copyright owner. They are stealing the public domain.
This often happens after the copyright owners give money to the people who are changing the law. They are bribing the lawmakers to get the lawmakers to give public resources (the intellectual property public domain) to them. They, the copyright owners who bribe and the lawmakers who take these bribes, should both be sent to prison.