EU About To Vote On Copyright Extension

ConfusedVorlon writes "According to Christian Engström (Pirate MEP), 'Monday or Tuesday this upcoming week there will be another round in the fight against prolonging the copyright protection term for recorded music in the EU. Now is an opportunity to contact MEPs, Members of the European Parliament, and persuade them to vote against the term extension."

Comments

Hummm... What?

[Tei]

95 years? thats negating the right to use music that you have heard your whole life. Do these people voting understand why theres a limit?
If anything must be lowered, since music can start creating profit sooner and with computer networks can be instant and worldwide. Music don't need to move in slow trucks anymore.. has ben accelerated.

I have the feeling this has ben caused by political corruption. Money from these music companies. I hope I am wrong.

Re:Hummm... What?

[mentil]

I imagine it's less 'corruption' and more 'indoctrination'.
Imagine a conversation going something like this: "When music goes into public domain, its potential for economic use is wasted. In order to maximize economic activity the copyright term on music needs to be lengthened."
Throw in some statistics about the number of people employed in the music industry who remaster old music, and dollar amounts of how much is made from old music. Add some emotional pleas saying how poor old ladies like Yoko Ono etc. won't make any money from their relatives' legacy.
Basically they argue that economic purposes always trump public good, because economy is more important than anything. They probably even believe it, too.

Re:Hummm... What?

[Intrepid imaginaut]

95 years? thats negating the right to use music that you have heard your whole life. Do these people voting understand why theres a limit?

Basically record companies and big media want to extend copyright because as the middleman between those who create and those who enjoy the creation, they get to scoop off 90% of the profits. Some of these profits they put into lobbying corrupt politicians, and don't think we haven't noticed who exactly they are.

But look what's happening - there are three effects coming together here. First of all, older creative works are being locked down by these media groups, for longer periods. Second of all, they had power through distribution and marketing networks, if you weren't with them, you would never be seen/heard. Thirdly, they had the means to create these artistic works, printers for books, sound studios for music, movie studios for well movies. Right now, distribution is basically free, so that's one incentive to sign a contract gone. And the cost to create these works is dropping daily. I can write, publish and make a fortune off a book right now if I want, no contracts signed with anyone. Music likewise. Even movies, I can buy a thousand euros worth of equipment and make a pretty damn good movie out of it, with enough patience. The bar is lowering.

So ultimately what might end up happening is the middlemen with their lock on older creative content will fade away, leaving behind only the shell of the laws they helped create, and from that will come an entirely fresh take on culture, a renaissance as it were. I still don't agree that copyrights should be more than say 24 years max, just pointing out that these copyright extensions will do no good whatsoever for the media giants, their time is done.

Re:Hummm... What?

[metacell]

Real economists, on the other hand, realise that private use is also economic activity.If x people listen to a song, it produces the same amount of good regardless of whether they do it for free or have to pay for the pleasure. If all other things are equal, listening for free is preferable, since it cuts out the middle mean and reduces economic waste.

This is where I believe the pragmatic politician and the economist start to differ. The pragmatic politician says, "What about all those people who are employed in the recording industry? Won't they be out of a job?"
The economist answers, "Yes, but that's actually a good thing. That means labour is freed up to do something more useful. Selling and distributing music is not needed any more."
And the politician answers, "Sorry, but I have to think of people's jobs. I won't get re-elected if I make a few thousand people unemployed - especially not if they're people with strong lobbying groups and good connections to journalists and intellectuals."

The only time copyright is good for the economy, is when it provides a strong incentive to produce more artistic and literary works. Providing employment for artists and all the middle-men is not an end in itself.

Re:Hummm... What?

[martin-boundary]

Imagine a conversation going something like this: "When music goes into public domain, its potential for economic use is wasted. In order to maximize economic activity the copyright term on music needs to be lengthened."

That's interesting. Normally, companies don't want old products to compete economically with newer products, because the money that people spend on the old directly reduces the earnings from the new (market cannibalization). If the old songs go into the public domain, all of people's disposable income related to music will be spent on recent songs.

However by your argument, new music must be so inferior that the market is shrinking, so keeping the old in the market is necessary to prop up the overall earnings.

Re:Hummm... What?

[mentil]

Cannibalizing sales from themselves is preferable to free downloads cannibalizing their sales. $10 cannibalizing $10 is better than $0 cannibalizing $10. Distributors don't care if their $10 comes from old or new songs.
If you look at music sales, they ARE shrinking recently. The long tail of old music is apparently large enough to justify the lobbying dollars required to get these copyright extensions passed, as long as that is true they will keep lobbying for extensions.

Re:Hummm... What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Psh! Not even that, anymore! The Lion King shows that they'd just gladly plagarize something. They only care about copyright so far as they can keep anybody else down.

Re:Hummm... What?

[MojoRilla]

And the stories of Snow White, Pinocchio, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and many others were taken (stolen?) by Disney from the public domain.

Disney definitely wants things both ways...it liberally borrowed from the public domain, but doesn't want any of its stuff there.

It is true that Disney licensed Mary Poppins. It is very interesting though that the author of Mary Poppins, PL Travers, was a giant pain in the butt for Disney. According to IMDB, she greatly interfered in the making of the movie. Among other things she wanted major changes to the final film, including removing the chalk drawing animated sequence and removing all the music and replacing with period songs like "Ta Ra Ra Boom De Ay" or "Greensleeves". I would argue that the music is the soul of the movie.

If the argument is that art won't get created without copyright, an equally valid argument is that art isn't getting created due to copyright.

Re:Too little too late...

[dabadab]

I guess you are mixing up things a little: while copyright protection in general is 70 years (or life + 70 years), sound recording and moviess are an exception so that they are protected "only" for 50 years.
However, any sane discussion about copyright should focus on cutting back the protection time to something like 20 years and getting rid of the ridiculous "life of the creator plus" part.

Copyright has become absurd

[Lord Bitman]

Copyright law at this point has become so absurd that you now have three options:
  - Do nothing. individuals completely ignore copyright law because it's insane
  - Make copyright law more absurd, thus weakening it further.
  - Weaken copyright law.

No matter what you do at this point, copyright law has pretty much "jumped the shark", and can't be considered relevant or applicable to any situation.

Re:Copyright has become absurd

[Anonymous Coward]

...can't be considered relevant or applicable to any situation.

Except in courts, which, one could argue, is the most important situation.

Re:Copyright has become absurd

[arkhan_jg]

You forgot option 4:

- Make copyright law more absurd, thus making it easier for large corporations to completely bankrupt anyone that tries to exercise their rights AND implement technical measures (DRM etc) such that customers who are unable or unwilling to breach copyright via the internet get less and less rights and utility out of the works and hardware they purchase copies of.

See: Loss of right of resale, i.e. first sale doctrine, via one-use registration codes or outright tying of purchase to a non-transferable account (steam, pretty much all retail pc games)
See: blocking using MP3s as ringtones on mobile handsets, forcing repeat purchase of already owned music
See: plays-for-sure
See: Recording industry suing amazon cloud service for not buying additional licences to store music that users have already paid for - including MP3s from amazon itself
See: do-not-record bit on broadcast media
See: HDCP etc making it harder for people with otherwise compatible equipment watching, recording, or legitimately backing up their HD media.
See: Apple lobbying (though thankfully failing) to make rooting the iphone illegal under the DMCA.
See: Sony suing the bejesus out of geohot et al to try and put the jailbreak genie of the PS3 back in the bottle.

etc, etc, etc.

This is a war. And they are winning the battles while losing the war. While copyright as currently implemented is absurd, and getting more so, there's a lot of damage being caused to legitimate uses - and users - while the big content middle-men flail around trying to stay relevant and stop losing the money they think they're due.

Let's stop calling it "protection"

[kikito]

It's a "copy restriction", not a "copy protection".

Re:Too little too late...

[JasterBobaMereel]

How much new work will the Author make after they are dead ... none

So why life+anything?

How much music do you know from 20 years ago... 10 years... 5 years ... compared to how much is published?

Most music careers are not this long, so why protect an artist who does not produce for this long?

Re:Make it permanent

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they need to attach a yearly property tax on all items copyrighted if it's extended.

You want a perpetual copyright? then you get a property tax attached to it. So if each song is worth millions as you claim in the courts, we TAX you at that value. Plus you pay taxes on it for every day it's not released to the public domain.

If they want to screw the people, then at least give us tax money out of it.

Re:Make it permanent

[Anonymous Coward]

You've got it wrong. Privatize profit and socialize costs, not the other way around!

(That's what the people with the money want, at least.)