Russian President: Time To Reform Copyright

An anonymous reader writes "While most of the rest of the world keeps ratcheting up copyright laws by increasing enforcement and terms, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev appears to be going in the other direction. He's now proposing that Russia build Creative Commons-style open and free licenses directly into Russian copyright law. This comes just a few days after he also chided other G8 leaders for their antiquated views on copyright."

Comments

Citation.

[headkase]

Just to support your comment a bit, see this story which just happens to be on CNN's front page: here.

From that:

"The increased difficulty in protecting data comes as the value of intellectual property is skyrocketing for companies. In 2009, 81% of the value of S&P 500 companies was "intangible assets" such as patented technology, proprietary data and market plans, according to an estimate by Ocean Tomo Intellectual Capital Equity. In 1985, only 68% of the S&P 500 market value was from intangibles, according to Ocean Tomo."

So, you're not far off the mark: The USA says it's wealthy because it is counting "intangibles" as wealth, or more accurately: things that do not suffer from scarcity. If your main assets do not suffer from scarcity, you have a problem because supply, once known, is infinite: and if supply is infinite then the real cost of it is zero.

Pres. Medvedev is a great troll!

[Cyberax]

Pres. Medvedev is a great troll! Unfortunately, he doesn't decide anything in Russia - Putin does.

For example, quite recently "Deep Purple" was forced to pay $15000 for performance of music by "Deep Purple" (http://russian-law.livejournal.com/44954.html)!

You see, there's a mandatory 'performance fee' in Russia which goes toward central agency which then distributes gathered money to artists (minus 15% commission). Also they receive 1% of sale price for all computing equipment. And about 0.1 cent from each square meter of hotel space. And also there's no practical way to opt-out out of this system for artists.

So Medvedev can talk all he wants, it won't change a thing.

Re:Pres. Medvedev is a great troll!

[jovius]

Where's the topic?

Besides the concert organizer skipped the payment (and paid). Deep Purple didn't pay anything.

Right societies around the world demand compensation from concert promoters for the music performed. The artist is paid first for the performance (promoter pays) and for the music they play (promoter pays, 10% taken by rights society). The payment for the rights society (of which artists are members) is for their services of tracking the usage of artists' music worldwide - the societies' mission is to protect the artist, so in this case they demanded the promoter to pay so that Deep Purple is rightfully compensated.

That's what the article you linked says too.

The situation in Russia may be a bit underdeveloped (and one should follow if the society forwards the money to Deep Purple) but it's not that different from the rest of the world.

Re:Finally!

[Forty Two Tenfold]

"In Russia, you reform copyright law. In the United States of America, copyright law reforms you..."

FTFY

Re:Copyright is main US industry, while not others

[Anonymous Coward]

I am Russian, and let me assure you that these talks are just that - talks to BS electorate for president elections this fall.
D.A. Medvedev is like Russian's Obama - he talks a lot but nothing is ever gets done -)

Re:Copyright is main US industry, while not others

[kerohazel]

It's also understandable why US tried to fight for copyrights so much - that's basically the only thing they produce now.

Although I share your worry that the US will become an IP-based economy, there's still a long way to go before that happens.

Manufacturing and trade still dwarf other the information and entertainment sectors:
http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/IBQTable?_bm=y&-filter=&-sortkey2=&-defOrder=N&-sortkey1=&-ds_name=EC0700A1&-sortkey0=-RCPTOT&-NAICS2007=00|21|22|23|31-33|42|44-45|48-49|51|52|53|54|55|56|61|62|71|72|81&-ib_type=NAICS2007&NAICS2007sector=*2&-geo_id=01000US&-dataitem=RCPTOT|GEO_ID$|NAICS2007|NAICS2007$|OPTAX$|FOOTID|ESTAB|PAYANN|EMP|NESTAB|NRCPTOT&-_lang=en
(Sorry link got FUBAR, paste it manually if you want to see it.)

The US also remains the world's largest manufacturer:
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2009/10/us-still-worlds-largest-manufacturer.html
(Sorry to have to link to a blog, but the reference in the post is a dead link.)

Re:Against Intellectual Monopoly

[glodime]

There's no need to subscribe to natural law theory to support the liberalization or eliminating of intellectual property laws. Against Intellectual Monopoly by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine takes a pragmatic approach to evaluating intellectual property. They argue through empirical study that eliminating intellectual property laws would actually improve innovation and creation.

Golgafrinchans

[mcgrew]

Your comment made me think of HHGTG.

TFA says the writer doesn't understand why CC should be baked into copyright, well, I'm no lawyer and I don't speak Russian, but perhaps he's doing what I've suggested all along -- that no noncommercial copying be deemed "infringing". You're no more going to stop P2P file sharers than you're going to stop potheads from smoking, or stop people from drinking back in the 1920s.

Noncommercial "infringement" doesn't harm anyone, and studies show that "piracy" actually increases sales. Music pirates spend more money of music than non-pirates. A book publisher commissioned a study a couple of years ago to find out how much piracy hurt sales, and was flabbergasted to find that there was a second sales "spike" when the pirate version hit the web.

The RIAA is at war with their competetion, the indies. The indies rely on P2P and the web, while the RIAA has radio. If there were no such thing as radio, the RIAA would embrace file sharing. Hell, back in the 1950s there was a "payola" scandal where RIAA labels would PAY to have their songs on the radio.

As Cory Doctorow (who gives his ebooks away for free on boingboing) says, nobody ever went broke from piracy, but many artists have starved from obscurity.