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Denmark Now Supports EU Copyright Term Extension
airfoobar submitted an editorial by Bernt Hugenholtz. From the article "Bad news from Denmark. According to an official press release, the Danish government has changed its position and now endorses the European Commission's proposal to extend the term of protection for sound recordings. Since Denmark was part of a fragile blocking minority in the European Council, there is a danger now that the EU Presidency will try to push through the proposal within a matter of weeks."
Posted by Unknown Lamer? I sense a conspiracy against my country!
Clicked pie.
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
Well, that certainly sounds necessary to encourage artists to create. Not redundant or counter-productive at all.
Anything older than a decade is ancient!
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We're clinging to the status quo, occasionally slipping. The long-term trend is clear. We **never** push things back the other way. We never even try, and we certainly don't succeed.
Question is...who bribed and who got bribed?
At some point, a person should stand before a legislative committee dealing with copyright term extensions - pick a country where these discussions are happening, any one - and ask just how many more term extensions will be granted, or whether copyright terms will be made permanent de jure, not just de facto.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Danskjävlar!
Happy people make bad consumers.
Simply extend copyright to 700 years and be done for it for a while.
"But I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; If I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am responsible for everything I do."
("The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress", 1966)
No copyright extensions will affect me as long as P2P exists.
Denmark seem to have decided to go with the parliaments line, they are still not supporting the initial council proposal. If the rest of the council does not bend to the parliament's will, the EP will have a second reading, and the proposal will maybe be shot down.
So lets just all copywrite and trademark everything until we end up using Orewellian "Double plus good" because "awesome" has been copywrited until the end of time.
HDGary secures my bank
At the current pace of extending copyright terms, copyrights themselves will have no meaning.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
As long as they keep extending it, I'll keep ignoring it. I think that's fair.
This change was made because the right people were bribed and/or threatened.
Humanity's single greatest embarrassment is their complete incompetence at self-governance.
Apparently the industry just *hasn't* finished skullfucking Elvis yet, so they need another twenty years...
So, who was bribed to make this change ?
Remember how spain was to push a draconian penalty system for filesharers, until through wikileaks it came out that u.s. government was heavily bullying and threatening spanish government to pass the bill. And when this hit the news, spanish assembly unanimously turned down the filth that originated from u.s.
I dont even suspect - im sure that there is same kind of play at work here. A government which was against what private interests in the dirtiest, rotten country of the world, switches stance out of the blue.
Read radical news here
That's the US reasoning. In Europe, control of their creations is viewed as an intrinsic right of artists and creators. Furthermore, any argument you make from the American point of view is going to be met by the deep-seated European conviction that there is no art or culture in the US that's worth protecting anyway so Americans should just keep out of these discussions. If you want to convince Europeans, you need to come up with a different argument. But, frankly, between European attitudes, corporate lobbying, and policy laundering, you might as well talk to a wall.
(Remember that the current copyright insanity originated in Europe with the Berne convention; the US refused to comply for a long time, but finally gave in in the 1970's.)
So if one buys a album in 1961 when the copyright term is 20 years,
one has an expectation that it will be in the public domain in their lifetime.
If a law later changes the rules, is that ex-post facto.
(Is the act the buying of the album, of trying to distribute it 20 years later?)
30 years is sufficient, for two reasons. First, 30 years is sufficient time for an artist to receive payment, for most of his working career, as a result of some artistic production he created. Second, 30 years is long enough that the "net present discounted value" (at a 5% discount rate) of anything after 30 years is negligible. As a result, record companies will not make investments or produce anything or change their investment behavior now because of payments to be received after 30 years in the future.
Remember that intellectual property is not "property" in the normal sense. It cannot be stolen, for example, but only copied. Intellectual property is a construct, whereby the producers of intellectual content can be compensated for their labor. 30 years is enough time for people to be compensated for their labor, and is longer than the investment horizon of companies.
OK, I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but can anyone tell me how this could be justified? Using U.S. copyright as an example, the first law to grant copyright was enacted in 1790 and secured an artist with 14 years of protection and one 14-year extension if the artist was still alive. It is important to note that during this time, reproduction of the copyrighted work was extremely difficult. The phonograph would not be invented for another 100 years which means that copyright essentially boiled down to 28 years of exclusive performance rights. Even once the phonograph was invented, it would take a long time to produce a sufficient quantity of records and an even longer time to ship the records to other countries. Fast forward to the year 2011 and now we allow musicians to retain copyright for 120 years. This is four times the length of time that the original copyright laws allowed and this is at a time when a song can be recorded and distributed nearly instantaneously to the other side of the planet. With such better means of distribution, how can we justify periods of copyright law that extend far beyond the average lifetime of the musician who created the works?
Of course, the answer is that corporations need to be able to milk their products for as long as they possibly can and musicians want to make sure that their children never have to work a day in their lives, so they pay to have the laws extended. Every time these laws are extended, works that should enter the public domain are taken away from us and withheld for a longer period of time. These extensions will continue until we stand up and demand copyright reform that brings us closer to the original copyright laws. With such easier means of distribution, there is no reason to offer more than that.
Humanity's single greatest embarrassment is their complete incompetence at self-governance.
And here I thought it was religion, given the fact that the majority of mankind believes in an imaginary all-powerful entity that cares what they do and then bothers to punish or reward them based on whether they follow different sets of rules based on which particular flavour of superstition a given individual subscribes to.
When 1person suffers from a delusion,it is called insanity.When many people suffer from a delusion,it is called religion
I wish that I too could keep getting paid for the work I did decades ago but because I don't make records if I don't do more work I don't get paid.
Maybe if I bribe enough high ranking public officials they'll take stuff that rightfully belongs to the public and give it to me too.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini
Proof: "I attach great importance to the musicians have strong rights" as a basis to extend the copyright term. If he pulls his head out of the sand, he might learn that musicians aren't to benefit from this, but rather a very select group of very large companies. But everyone reading /. already knows that.
It's our task to let ordinary people know, that these large companies are trying to steal content from them that's about to become theirs. But this stealing... is that legal?
"I will make it legal"
See, If your work (no matter whether you are a builder, architect, engineer, or what) would get such obscene amount of *protection* , society's economy would hurt badly , and folks would be against in a much stronger manner
It's the very fact that the things this concerns are just entertainment - music, games, some books means that absurdity like this is easier tolerated as it doesn't impinge on anything essential
50 years is ENOUGH. We want there recordings in public domain, not extended indefinetely.
The REAL reason that this extension needs to be in place is because of the greatest fear of the content providers: the main-streaming of public domain, formerly commercial, music. Right now it's just not there, it doesn't exist. Can you imagine a website like Project Gutenberg where you can legally download music from the 60s? Free music from The Beatles (though scratchy and in mono)? This has to be stopped at any cost!!! Panic!!!! Before you know it there's Project Edison!!!!
At the very least religion seems to make for effective conditioning in that healthy skepticism and logical reasoning don't appear to be valued by society at large (at least in the US). Alas, questioning authority is frowned upon by a sizable portion of the population.
^^vv<><>BA
With such better means of distribution, how can we justify periods of copyright law that extend far beyond the average lifetime of the musician who created the works?
Easy: In the government of man, he who has the gold makes the rules. The movie studios, through their ownership of television news media, control who gets chosen in the primary elections. They play up Hollywood's favorite candidate (e.g. Barack Obama and John McCain) and don't let anyone proposing real change (e.g. Ron Paul) get a word in edgewise at the debates.
When you annex a house to make a road you must pay the owner. Those songs would have been mine (public property, therefore part mine) and now they won't be. I want compensation for your annexation.
If your father cultivated a wine berg, and you happen to own it, and you are still making wine: ofc you are payed based on his work.
Your analogy is utterly misguided.
The wineberg is still growing grapes, and he is making wine. He isn't paid for his father's wineberg, he's paid for the wine he produces. His father's labour has merely created some value - a well kept wineyard , which aids in the making of wine
Unlike information, wine is matter, and as such, it is scarce - he must make more of it to sell, and customers must buy more of it, to , well, get drunk
The analogy with regular labour is more like if every family, as long as the house stands, had to pay five bucks per given time period to every one of the builders, and then their children
That's essentially what royalties are
The first few lines of the announcement make it clear that it is for "the musicians". So I will compose a song at age 15 and reap the benefits until age 85? I hope I can still hear properly then. Way to go! Making it easier for "the musicians".
Society use your Sciences
This is for recordings. Compositions are already longer. So if you record Bach at age 15, you can reap the benefits until age 85.
This doesn't surprise me the least with the bunch of incompetent buffoons sitting in our government at the moment. There has been a scandal about every month, ranging from overpaying private corporations to basically not knowing immigration law properly, ever sense former-PM Anders Fogh Rasmussen left to become Secretary General of NATO. And don't even get me started on COP15.
Luckily there's an election around the corner. Let's hope the other team knows what they're doing.
1) Lean on Europe to extend copyright.
2) "Harmonize" copyright terms in America.
3) Profit!
Not even a fucking ???.
Seriously, retroactive copyright extension is the biggest bullshit imaginable. I could sorta understand and deal with laws making the copyright on new works longer, but the way it is now, we'll forever leave locked up all culture since basically Steamboat Willie was published. Even today, works created the day I was born will not enter public domain till after I die. I'll never see any music by The Beatles be public domain, despite their music coming out when my parents were children. Star Wars will be milked for profit until long after I am dead and buried and turned to worm food. Seriously, how long is enough for the copyright lobby? Till the creator's grandchildren are dead? Through the 10th generation? The hundredth? Or are they going to introduce a Constitutional amendment allowing for perpetual copyright and just fucking get it over with.