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Why Recordings From World War I Aren't Public Domain
An anonymous reader writes "While Disney and others have done a great job pushing the end date for works entering the public domain ever further forward, most people have assumed that anything from before 1923 is in the public domain. However, it turns out that this is not true for sound recordings, in part due to an accidental quirk in copyright law history — in that Congress, way back in 1909, believed that sound recordings could not be covered by copyright (they believed the Constitution did not allow recordings to be covered), and thus, some state laws stepped up to create special copyrights for sound recordings. A court ruling then said that these state rules were not overruled by federal copyright law. End result? ANY recorded work from before 1972 (no matter how early it was recorded) won't go into the public domain until 2049 at the earliest."
Every time I start to feel a shred of guilt about my rampant piracy, I read something like this. Then the guilt goes away. Copyright is a corrupt system, which no longer serves it's original purpose of promoting production of useful art. Instead it is nothing but a mechanism to ensure maximum profits for those least deserving, and to make sure that the public domain remains small and legally dangerous enough to pose no serious competition. I pay copyright law no respect, and will not do so unless it it reformed to bring it back in line with sensible terms, make it less biased towards those who can afford millions of dollars in legal fees and eliminate the possibility of copyright being abused as a tool to censor criticism or prevent interoperability.
So any movie using the Wilhelm Scream are also breaking copyrights? There go a *lot* of big Hollywood movies!
I'm going to continue doing what I normally do, and ignore copyright law. Absurdities like this just show how backwards and useless the system is. Scrap it, make everything public domain.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Whoops, somebody forgot to read the Constitution.
A law passed in Ohio applies in Ohio, not in Iowa.
To be captured by an Ohio copyright, a recording would have to be made in Ohio and copied in Ohio. A recording made in Ohio and copied in Iowa wouldn't count.
I don't think this is much of a problem.
Well, I indeed use it as an excuse for theft. I go into the store and steal the DVDc, CDs and books I want. I even steal the DVD players and TV sets to use them. That way when somebody raids my house and sees I have about 10.000 CDs and DVDs that where stolen, I will be paying much less then somebody who did some copyright infringement of 3 numbers on their mp3 player from an album they bought.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
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That's right, copyright is STEALING! It is stealing history and culture from future generations. It is stealing from the global knowledge of humanity. Not just infringed upon; information is locked up until it rots in to nothingness.
I have no specific desire to take control of mickey-frikkin-mouse away from the Walt Disney Corporation, or similar works from their holders. But I believe the original idea of copyright was to benefit humanity by encouraging people to create more works by granting an author the PRIVILEGE to control how their work was distributed for a limited time.
However, if a holder does not ultimately contribute something back to humanity in exchange for this privilege, then they are literally stealing from humanity.
The current system effectively prevents these works from continuing to benefit and enrich humanity after they are out of print by failing to permit works from entering the public domain in a timely manner if ever. This needs to be fixed.
For a person or entity to retain control over a work indefinitely, such as current laws essentially permit, is STEALING from humanity.
Pay? In the UK you might even get a flat rent free:
Bradley Wernham, 19, responsible for a £1million crime spree, was spared a prison sentence last October after police told a judge he had turned his life around.
Wernham was given a community service order instead and relocated to another town where he was given a flat rent-free.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/08/05/one-man-crimewave-bradley-wernham-jailed-by-the-judge-who-let-him-off-115875-22465784/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/7926040/Prolific-burglar-given-second-chance-offends-again-after-three-months.html
The individual artist should be able to profit from their work for the rest of their life.
Why? I can invent something that saves people's lives and get protection for 20 years under patent law, but some crappy pop song should get protection for the rest of that person's life? Something is wrong there. Why not make it a fixed length of 20 years also?
When you say "should be able to profit" you mean of course be granted a legal monopoly. An artist can profit from their work without any legal protection.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
The individual artist should be able to profit from their work for the rest of their life.
Why? The rest of us actually have to work - we don't get to show up for a few weeks and then say "You have to pay me for the rest of my life for that work". Giving them a few years of copyright to make money off of it, sure, I'm fine with that. However, it's BS for them to get paid to sit back and do nothing for 60+ years because once upon a time, they wrote a few songs.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
...something brand new.
No such thing. There are only unique combinations of what already exists. And more often than not, more than one person will independently come up with the same combination, which only further illustrates the absurdity of copyright, patent, and trademark law...
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
...should be able to profit from their work for the rest of their life.
Then I'm entitled to the same benefits. I want mileage royalties on every car I fixed back in 1973 for the rest of my life. A penny per mile will be sufficient...
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
In reality of course the whole point of copyright was to promote works of art and scientific discoveries. In the US this purpose is even spelled outright in the Constitution where it reads: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.".
The Founding Fathers (Jefferson particularly ) were very uneasy about granting effective monopoly to authors at the expense of the general public and so they sought to allow it only if the general public benefited from such an arrangement more then it had to invest (in terms of enforcing such a law).
Your attempt at insight aside, the limited time span of Copyright is designed to increase the availability of the arts to everyone in the long run by creating a temporary monopoly on a work for profit to be gained so as to encourage the creation of works that will end up in the public domain eventually.
The goal is to have all of this creativity available to everyone for free, that's the destiny of the work. The temporary profiteering is allowed to encourage creativity from people who are monetarily driven.
Libraries bypass this system by actually purchasing works and then making them available free, entirely bypassing the intent of Copyright to our benefit.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
No, we're not bound by foreign laws when on UK ground.
Tell that to Gary McKinnon (still fighting?), the people who ran a gambling site in the UK (that didn't prevent americans from using it), various dodgy bankers...
I dread the day when I get summonsed to appear in a court in east texas to get sent to federal PMITA prison for the crime of "programming" (its bound to be breaking someones software patents isn't it?). That is the primary reason for opposing the unfair extradition treaty - it could be you next that gets "rendered" to get raped in the US penal system.
This 'times' or no more or less creatively starved then any other time.
Get back under your bridge you damn troll.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You want to ensure that your great-grandchildren have a roof over their heads? Encourage your children to tell their children to study hard in school, learn a useful trade, and get a job, so they can provide for their children. You're not supposed to have to pay for that yourself.
When did the establishment of a hereditary leisure class become a social good?
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
"Arse".
Because he's a pussy.
I could care less about Mickey. It's all the music, art and books that are way less "popular" that are hiding in vaults that the public eye will never see again because they are under copyright (by corporations), but at the same time, not cost effective to keep on the shelves.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
This. I made the same comment in another story just yesterday. When you make something or provide a service to the community, you get paid for it. Society says, "thanks for doing that". That money is your influence within that community. The more good you do for the community, the more money/influence you have.
How the hell do you justify being able to pass on that influence to your kids? That doesn't benefit your community in any way. If you pass on the ability to do what you did - a skill, a trade, etc., then that helps. If you give them nothing beneficial to give back to that community, and the ability to influence it in negative ways, it's a social evil. It doesn't help the community you live in in any shape or form.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
> So seeing that I am probably the only person that has this copyrighted material
Your case underlines the bizarre "logic" of modern copyright law. Since you own the media, it is perfectly legal for you to destroy the recordings, which would, of course, destroy the "property" of the rightsholders (since they are the only copy). One wonders how that weird edge case fits into the "you wouldn't steal" rhetoric.
On the other hand, it's totally illegal for you to distribute these recordings to anyone except the rightsholders themselves. So it is effectively illegal for you to preserve this work for future generations.
This is why I do not feel bad in the least to advise you to digitize the recordings and upload them to some filesharing site like RapidShare or MegaUpload in an anonymous way, and then publicize the sharing link on a web forum where there will be a lot of interested people (I'm sure there must be some web forums where WWI history buffs hang out). Much as I like creators to be able to get paid, I hate even more for culture and information to be lost.
He can't remember how to spell credenza.
"by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
So, Authors can be given the exclusive right to sell, perform, use, whatever, things they've made or discovered. Cool. Except that right extends beyond the author's death- either to his/her estate, or whatever corporation had been given it.
What is the Constitutional rationale for rights extending after death? I can't imagine it promoting useful art.
Say I've got money from copyright royalties.
I bankroll my kids' educations.
They work hard at school, do well, go on to earn money in the real world. Maybe one of them makes money by producing works under copyright.
By the time THEY have kids, they've got enough money to get them through college. Maybe they inherit some of my money when I'm dead.
Rinse, repeat.
No need for inherited copyright.