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Czech Copyright Bill Undercuts Copyleft, Artists

Posted by Soulskill on from the czech-please dept.

Andorin writes "Earlier this month a copy of a draft of the Czech Republic's new Copyright Act [Czech PDF] was leaked to Pirate News. Included among several disturbing provisions are new regulations for 'public licenses' such as Creative Commons licenses and the GPL/BSD licenses. The amendment essentially requires that an artist wishing to use a public license must notify the administrator of a collecting agency, and must prove that they created the work in question. This goes against one of the strengths of Creative Commons and other licenses, namely the ease with which they can be applied. Additionally, collecting agencies will have increased jurisdiction over copylefted and orphaned works. ZeroPaid covers the story, noting that the amendment also reduces the royalties which artists receive from libraries by 40%, with that money instead going directly to publishers."

7 of 282 comments (clear)

  1. Speechless by rantomaniac · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm stunned. This has to be the most brutal attack on the idea of free culture to date. We're all accustomed to copyright being made more strict, but actively making it harder to release your works under permissive licensing is a new low.
    It's like the copyright lobbyists didn't care about keeping a low profile anymore and shouted "we own your government" from the rooftops.

    1. Re:Speechless by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Us: It's a bad law.

      Them: But, it's a law! There must be a good reason! Why do you think about stuff like this!?!

    2. Re:Speechless by mwvdlee · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It would be interresting if the same laws were to be applied to all copyright licenses. Want to publishing something closed source? "notify the administrator of a collecting agency, and must prove that they created the work in question".

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  2. Re:Copyleft does complicate the system by rantomaniac · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't see how it's fair to demand registration of copyleft and not other copyrighted works. Enforcement of copyright is (and should remain) a private not criminal matter, the government doesn't have to hunt anyone down. I imagine the authors of the work will show up in court if they file infrigement charges.

  3. VIolation of the Berne Convention by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Isn't this a violation of the Berne Convention?

    According to Wikipedia:

    Under the Convention, copyrights for creative works are automatically in force upon their creation without being asserted or declared. An author need not "register" or "apply for" a copyright in countries adhering to the Convention. As soon as a work is "fixed", that is, written or recorded on some physical medium, its author is automatically entitled to all copyrights in the work and to any derivative works, unless and until the author explicitly disclaims them or until the copyright expires. Foreign authors are given the same rights and privileges to copyrighted material as domestic authors in any country that signed the Convention.

    1. Re:VIolation of the Berne Convention by jdgeorge · · Score: 5, Funny

      Appears that is correct; this draft is not compatible with the Berne Convention.

      Of course, it is only a leaked draft, not even a public document, so it has likely not been subjected to normal sanity checks, or by normal, sane Czechs.

  4. Re:Think of the Artists by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Most people get paid for the work they do, not the work that they did. If a construction worker wants some more money, he has to build another house. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that if a performing artist wants more money, he should have to execute another performance.

    Artists should be paid for live music. In the modern technological landscape, digital copies are no longer the product, but rather the advertisement.

    And besides, even if that wasn't true, there is nothing that says an artist has to be an artist. If artists can't make a living being artists, then they can go get a job that pays, just like the rest of us. I see no evidence that this will result in a complete absence of new music, and if it does then the forces of widespread demand will create new opportunities to profit on music.

    So your justification of your outdated business model is crap. Music publishing is an anachronism, and you need to stop taking our freedom away, move into the modern era, and get yourself a real job.