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EU Extends Music Copyright to 70 Years
MrSteveSD writes "The copyright on sound recordings by the Beatles, Rolling Stones and other famous bands was due to expire in the next few years. However, the EU Council has now scuttled any such hopes. The copyright term has been extended from 50 to 70 years with aging rockers expressing their delight."
There is no moral or philosophically defensible position that says someone needs to own a song or a movie for 70 years. The only explanation is greed overstepping all sense of proportion and reason. Disgusting. It just moves me with great anger to make sure I will do my best to hurt the bottom line of those who think dollar signs are more important than the common property of mankind.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Germany does not have the concept of copyright.
It has "Urheberrecht". (Which the organized crime loves to confuse with copyright.)
Urheberrecht is like author's right. And you can't give it away. If you made something, you have that right, nobody else, and nobody else ever will, even if you want it, and even if you sign it away. (That contract would be invalid.)
Also, nobody gives a fuck anymore about what those criminals think they can hallucinate-up to further their protection racket.
They are criminals, and I treat them as such.
The last time they tried to put up a propaganda stand at our main train station, I ripped off their posters, took the megaphone, and made people chase them out of the place.
The next time I'll not be so nice.
Anti-copyright people at this time think more like economists. We look at incentives, rather than goals. The incentive in the situation you describe is for people to kill off artists so they can have all their stuff for free. That is a perverse incentive.
Racist? Come on buddy, do you even know what racism is? Irrational horseshit claims of racism for any remark about a nationality is the number one indicator of being a whiny bastard. Insensitive, sure. Racist? Hardly. Racist would be saying that the radiation from the nukes probably made them in to the inferior sub-human creatures they are today.
Racism is so overplayed.
If I can just reach out with my words and touch a butthole, just one, it will all be worth it.
Europe is batshit insane anyway with "artists".
Now, if you had a work of the painted kind, it goes for sale in auction, a percentage has to go to the original artist. Each and every time (may be just Germany, or EU wide).
They totally bought into the arteeest mythos and bullshit.
This law shouldn't take effect retroactively. It's making me want to say "fuck the system". I've already bought a couple of Beatles albums legally, but I should probably just download the rest out of spite (and justice).
which is totally what she said
Really? Cause if I write a piece of software I can sell it more then once. Its almost as if creating something is different then doing work others pay you to do.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
There is a better way: A yearly commercialization fee. If you want to release a song for sale, you must register it and pay a fee for copyright protection. The first year, the fee is one dollar (or one Euro). For subsequent years, the fee is twice what it was in the previous year. You are free to pay the commercialization fees for as long as you wish. If the commercialization fee is not paid, the work goes into the public domain.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Europe is batshit insane anyway with "artists".
The trouble is that the U.S. Congress uses EU insanity as an excuse to "harmonize" its copyright legislation to match what foreign countries offer in a game of copyright leapfrog. Otherwise, what's left of the U.S.-headquartered music and film industry claims it will leave the country. This was the argument for the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 in the United States.
Art is an investment. You typically do the work up front for free, and then you hope to make the money back selling copies for years to come. The problem here is that it's not the artists that own the rights, it's the labels, and the labels don't do jack shit to earn their money in most cases, or at least not in proportion to the amount they invest. It's not uncommon for them to place all the risk on the group and then pocket nearly all the proceeds of the album sales.
Going much beyond 50 years is a travesty. There is some incentive to be had from 50 years, many artists hope to be able to provide for their family for a period after their death, and extending copyright doesn't guarantee income.
Adding years adds incentive to create works, probably also beyond 50 years as you say, and that benefits the world so that's good.
Do you really think that when the Rolling Stones were recording their songs in the 60s they were thinking 'you know, if I couldn't rely on copyright protecting my income for the next fifty years I'd just say screw this and go down the pub'?
I hate to say this, but I'm 36 years old now, and when I look at movies from the 80's, I am sooooo happy it's 2011. A mediocre movie from 2011 tends to be more entertaining than cult movies of that decade. Even stuff like Citizen Kane, usually proclaimed to be the best thing since sliced bread, is excruciatingly slow on the uptake and generally unwatchable unless you zip through it at three times the speed.
There are certain movies that are timeless to me. The Shining is still interesting to this day. As is Casablanca, and I'm sure I can come up with a list, like Brando's On the Waterfront, the Godfather and other cult films that are deservedly up there. But the amount of trite shit that has emanated from the movie and music business is staggering. But even respectable titles like Blade Runner don't stand the test of time completely. IMHO, The Fifth Element is far less passé.
I think the people that look at all the stuff that comes out now and compare it to one or two great movies from three decades ago just suffer from selective memory usage. Seriously. Have you looked at Back to the Future with adult eyes? It's insufferable.
Disclaimer: I'm musician and once I recorded bunch of pieces which took about 2 years of my life (real instruments, real voice, real mixing). Yeah, I'm perfectionist, sue me. They're released under CC now.
Sorry, but you are wrong and you can claim us as enemies as much as you want - you *don't* have any God/Nature/whatever given rights to profit. You have to earn it. Can't do it as performer or musician, you're not good enough, not lucky enough - sorry, but that's life. That's how things IS for rest of us. Why you should be different, huh? Why people who contributions are really worthy to public releases their copyrighted works under CC or PD or allow share non-commercially? Not all they earn big bucks. So tell me? Maybe they admit that music is just for their hearts, that it's not necessary to bring them profit?
For song and movie it is quite clear that even 20 years from publishing is way too much, but I could live with that. Tell me how many songs have gained creds for their owners after 20 years? Several performers comes into mind, all swimming in money already earned from these songs.
These extensions are not for performers, they're not for authors - they are for companies so they can claim that song is actually their property (according to law, it's not) and so they can tell shareholders - hey, we have billions worth of property, invest in us.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!