Slashdot Mirror
Music Copyright In EU Extended To 70 Years
rastos1 writes "The European Parliament extended the copyright in the EU for the performers of musical works from 50 to 70 years. The legislation will be reviewed in 3 years. The European Commission will consider extending the scope to audiovisual works too." So performers will collect for 20 more years from the date of performance; composers' rights already extend to 70 years beyond their deaths. Update: 4/26 at 12:15 GMT by SS: Reader rimberg points out that while the copyright extension was passed in the European Parliament, it is now being held up in the Council of Ministers awaiting further debate on the issue.
What artist is going to live long enough for this to even matter? Sounds like another way for companies to wring a few more euros from the public.
and that's how people will treat it. It tears down any pretext of respect.
Todos mis movimientos están friamente calculados
How on earth would extending the copyright help those artists? How would it promote culture for the common good?
If they aren't recognized until after they're dead -- they're still dead and penniless.
How the hell did we ever let copyrights become transferable?
You wanna stop all this shit? Return all copyrights the the actual owners. The music industry would be destroyed overnight and this bullshit would end with it.
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
Paying for live performances is great, the money goes to the artist in exchange of their creativity and skill.
Paying for a performance more than once, and essentially, every time you experience it does not make sense. The artist does not make an effort every time someone hears their song.
I pay a car mechanic to fix my car and then stop. I don't continue paying them for the rest of my life despite the fact that I continue to enjoy their effort.
Yes, the artist may invest a lot of time and effort in their creation, and that's why they get money from every member of the audience, for each audience they perform to.
A recording of a performance is not a performance.
I know this may sounds harsh. The monetization of everything has created laws that don't make sense, like IP laws. The nature of IP is not material and unlike physical matter, IP is very difficult to fence off and contain. Artists are made successful by their audience, the general public.
If not for the endlessly greedy corporations still standing between creators and their audience, things could be much simpler, with shorter copyright terms, clear ownership for every piece of media we buy and the ability to share the stuff we like.
It is not mandatory for every successful artist to become a millionaire. Many programmers, writers, painters, inventors do create useful and beautiful works and never become very rich.
An idea or a tune may pop in more than one head at the same time. Calling it "mine" and trying to fence it off and make everyone else pay is ridiculous.
The IPI and other industry groups like to talk about the billions lost to piracy on the internet. But what they've done here dwarfs that. When you copy a song in violation of copyright you "steal" it once from one person or one company for a few years or however long goes by until you delete it or lose the disk its saved on.
But what has happened here is that the industry groups have stolen every single song written or recorded in the last 70 years from every single citizen of the EU for a duration of at least 20 whole years. The scale of their theft is many orders of magnitude greater than the worst case scenario for "internet piracy."
As far as I'm concerned, any rights owner that supports or benefits from any copyright term extension legislation has zero standing to complain about piracy. They broke the social contract that was in place when they created the music. Just because they have co-opted our so-called representatives to put a rubber-stamp of legality on their contract violation doesn't give them the moral high-ground in the conflict. They want new terms? Well, the only terms they deserve are a termination of their copyrights, termination with extreme prejudice.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
No. Copyright has served its term. These laws are going to be passed in every country that matters ,in one way or another, just like all those other laws we didn't like were passed. Listening to music from the mass media organisations is becoming immoral. What are we supporting by enjoying their music? We are supporting the subservience of art to money. Nothing more, nothing less. Black Sabbath is my favorite band. I first heard them after sneaking into my brothers bedroom and listening to his records. I thinK (due to burglary and media changes) I have bought the entire catalog of Black Sabbath several times. Well, fuck them. There is only one way to really say this. ..
cd Music/
mv Jamendo ~
cd
rm -rf Music/*
mv Jamendo/ Music/
Join Jamendo folks. Search, find, advertise, and promote the musicians on there. Any musician from the labels is either clueless or trying to fuck you over. That the bands that I grew up with, supported, lived with, showed me beauty, tears and life can support this situation guts me. Spineless little fucks they have become. Delete your music folks, delete your movies. If you see or hear something you like from them then email them asking for their album/movie/whatever under creative commons. Our failure to do this with lead to the death of our culture and the emotional death of ourselves. Subsumed in the search for more and more money.
If the RIAA and it's members want my remorse. It can turn it's body to a corpse.
I reserve the write to mangle english.
Actually, that's exactly the way it works for me. I don't get "residuals" on the work I do. The second I stop working, I stop getting paid too, I don't continue receiving money for my work for the rest of my life, despite the fact that it will still be benefitting my employer.
Those who support copyright are asking for a different standard, not the same, as everyone else gets. If you are employed to do something, you continue getting paid as long as you continue the work and no longer. If you want to get paid into your retirement, either ask for a pension as a condition of your employment (at which you may not be successful) or save and invest money during your working years.
If, on the other hand, you go into business for yourself, you must continually market and sell the products you offer. And if someone comes up with a technology that means you no longer can make money the way you once did? Tough. Find a new way to sell, find a new product, or file Chapter 11.
Copyright is an artificially created monopoly. Its like does not exist for anyone else. I don't continue to profit from my work after it's done and sold to someone. I don't get to tell people not to share it without slipping me cash. I don't get to tell them they can't tinker with it and improve it. That's the way it should be.
Removing copyright would simply level the playing field. Ideas aren't inherently scarce. If you can make money off selling them, or performing certain types of them, or coming up with them for people who enjoy your work, good on you. (People do sell bottled water, and water, at least in the US, is not inherently scarce and is effectively free, so it can work). If not, go find something else to do, and get paid in the same way on the same terms all the rest of us do. Quit whining that you have a "right" to a profit from doing anything at all. You have a right to try. You do not have a right to tell people they cannot share in an attempt to profit from something they could've replicated on their own.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
The real problem is that copyright is not an election issue. While most of slashdot readers are convinced that extension of copyright is evil, none are going to make it a big enough issue to force governments to back down.
Personally, I would prefer copyright was similar to patent rights. 17..20 years should be sufficient time for the Autists to be fully compensated.