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Pirate Party Leader: Copyright Laws Ridiculous
smitty777 writes "Rick Falkvinge, better known as the leader for Sweden's Pirate Party, recommends doing away with copyright laws since no one is following them anyway. FTA: '...he uses examples from the buttonmakers guild in 1600s France to justify eliminating the five major parts of copyright law today. The first two are cover duplication and public performance, and piracy today has ruined those. The next two cover rights of the creator to get credit and prevent other performances, satires, remixes, etc they don't like. Falkvinge says giving credit is important, but not worthy of a law. Finally, "neighboring rights" are used by the music industry to block duplication, which Falkvinge rejects.'"
The purposes of the copyright monpoly vary between legislations, so there is not "one" purpose.
In the United States, it is "to promote the progress and the useful arts", nothing more, nothing less. That is a direct quote from the constitution.
Well, record labels do provide many services to artists, starting from financing them when they're starting up, their professional help, their experience and their marketing channels. This isn't exactly free either. Here is a list of costs for advertising related stuff:
Optional mailing labor for CD $1.00 each
Optional mailing labor for CD+vinyl $1.50 each
Optional BDS tracking $1000
Optional Mediabase tracking $1000
Optional R&R Indicator tracking $1000
Optional Quarterbacking $100 00
College Radio (8 weeks) .$ 2500 .$ 2500 .$ 6000 .$ 2000
Jazz, Blues, Folk, Americana, Piano (up to 100 stations)
CMJ charting for URBAN, metal, electronic, jazz, world, AAA, (250 stations), or non-
charting for alternative
CMJ Top200 Charting (up to 500 stns; incl extra phones) $ 4000
CMJ Top200 Charting (up to 700 stns; incl extra phones
and CMJ core stations)
Regional (non charting, any genre) (50 stations)
Commercial Specialty Mixshow (8 weeks)
National Mixshow (BDS Level - 100 stations) $15,000
Mixshow (up to 70 stations, college & commercial) $ 6000
Dance Mixshow Charting (100 stations) $ 4000
Regional (non-charting) (10 stations) $ 6000
Commercial Regular Rotation for AC, Pop, R&B (8 weeks) .$ 7000 .$20000 .$ 1500/station
75 stations (small markets) $ 4000
150 stations (small markets)
R&R indicator stage 1 (small markets - 10 stations) $15000
R&R indicator stage 2 (medium & small markets - 25 stations).$30000
BDS Promotion (7-10 stations) $15000
FMQB charting (100+ stations, medium and small) $20000
R&R CHR/Pop Indicator (medium and small markets - 50 stations) $40000
Regional (non-charting) (10-15 stations) $8000
FMQB AC tracking (optional) $ 400/mo
High-Level AC Promotion (includes field staff)
(additional)
High-Level Pop/Urban Promotion (includes field staff) $40000
(additional)
High-Level station giveaways or commercials (unrated mkt) $ 200/station
High-Level station giveaways or commercials (small mkt) $ 500/station
High-Level station giveaways or commercials (medium mkt)
Commercial Regular Rotation for Rock, Alt, Urban (8 weeks) .$ 15000 .$ 1500/station
R&R indicator stage 1 (small markets - 10 stations)
R&R indicator stage 2 (medium & small markets - 25 stations) $ 30000
Regional (non-charting) (10-15 stations) $8000
BDS Promotion (7-10 stations) $15000
High-Level Promotion Urban (includes field staff) $40000
(additional)
High-Level station giveaways or commercials (unrated mkt) $ 200/station
High-Level station giveaways or commercials (small mkt) $ 500/station
High-Level station giveaways or commercials (medium mkt)
Commercial Regular Rotation for AAA or Smooth Jazz (8 weeks) .$20,000 .$ 200/mo
50 station special (medium and small) $ 8,000
FMQB / R&R charting (75 stations, all sizes)
Regional (non-charting) (20 stations) $ 2500
FMQB AAA tracking (optional)
High-Level Promotion (includes field staff) $10000
(additional)
Commercial Regular Rotation for Country (8 weeks)
Small market non-charting (50 small stations)
Copyright laws are to preserve the right of copying the work for the copyright holder.
The point of copyrights (and patents) is to promote the progress of science and the useful arts by securing for a limited time the exclusive right to use the work(s) to the person(s) who created them as they see fit.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Use the second link.
The original source of this message is the column on Techdirt named It is time to stop pretending to endorse the copyright monopoly. The ITWorld reporter (the first link in the story) muddles the message to some degree, and also introduces heavy bias into the story (see the headers over the comments section, for instance).
The original message is that yes, the copyright monopoly (or four/five monopolies) are ridiculous, but we should stop pretending to support them all while criticizing the draconian laws that are de facto needed to sustain them. IT World muddles this to that we should stop "following" the copyright monopoly laws. That is a different message (which I might have said too, but not in this particular article).
People don't make art just because they need a quick buck.
Any artist of any form worth their salt is doing it because they geinuinely like the artform, and would do so pay or no pay.
This coming from a musician who uploads his music for free download on the internet.
Proper attribution is a part of the moral rights due to an author (and is the only unquestionably valid and supportable aspect of Copyright, IMHO).
Yes.
Your implication is that without public funding or Copyright, creative works would no longer be produced. History demonstrates how ridiculous this is.
Allow any work to be copyrighted for 1 year without paying any fees. Let that be the "copyright from the moment your pen touches the paper".
Beyond Year 1, the cost of extending a copyright should be $0.01 * 2 ^ (Year #).
So, renewing the copyright for Year 2 costs $0.04.
Year 10 is $10.24
Copyright protection for a decade is affordable for anyone, and sometimes cheaper than coffee.
Year 20 is $10,485.76
Year 30 is $10,737,418.24
Year 40 is $10,995,116,277.76
So it provides everybody with a reasonable measure of copyright protection.
It provides corporate entities a way to keep copyrights on things that are very profitable.
It ensures that all works will eventually fall to the public domain.
Why not?
(Nitpicky edit)
"To promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts..."
(/Nitpicky edit)
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
Actually, this comes off the royalties paid to Artists. No wonder many of them do not see a cent of royalties because they are still "in the red".
For the record company it is easy to get a better price than what you see here, but the artist will not see it, the record company lives off the arbitrage.
In the end, many successful modern artist go direct to the Internet and bypass this sinkhole.
This is one thing that confuses me: at what point did casual entertainment become a useful art?
Actually, copyright laws GRANT, not preserve, the exclusive right of copying the work to the copyright holder. More correctly, the copyright laws curtail the rights of everyone but the copyright holder to make copies for a limited time.
This is a considerably different from laws against theft which simply prescribe legal penalties for violating the rights of property that exist independently of those laws.
That is, copyright legislates against a right for a limited time as part of a bargain to cause more works to exist. Property laws support rights that exist independently of the laws.
Given that, the looters are doing a very different thing than the copiers.
Commercial Regular Rotation for Rock, Alt, Urban (8 weeks) R&R indicator stage 1 (small markets - 10 stations) .$ 15000
R&R indicator stage 2 (medium & small markets - 25 stations) $ 30000
Regional (non-charting) (10-15 stations) $8000
BDS Promotion (7-10 stations) $15000
This looks like it was cut and paste from some sort of official spreadsheet or list. Wasn't there a massive antitrust lawsuit back in the 1970s where the government came down down hard on Pay for Play radio stations? The snippet I pasted above looks to my untrained eye like prices for playing singles. Could you expand on where you got this info, DCTech?
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
But copyright abolition is a cure worse than the disease.
The movie industry would bitch and moan for 5-10 years, then get back to business as usual, with movies being played in theaters and on TV, even if DVDs never get released (and likely, DVDs would be released at a $5-$10 price point, rather than the $30 price point most new DVDs list at). Books would stay as is. The result of complete abolition of copyright would be an explosion in music and software the likes of which the planet has never seen. Copyright is holding innovation back more than helping at this point, and doing so by punishing the general public. With it gone, more music would be out there, with no decrease in quality, and app store sized games would be released by the millions. Consoles would probably move back to cartridges and flash-based propriatary storage to maintain a digitial lock on games, and PC games would crash, but the fallout of the abolition would be a huge jump forward in Public knowledge, which was the original point of copyright. The US would be much much better off without copyright. I've visited some places with no software protections, and they are vibrant economies of software creation. You can code whatever you want without worrying that someone else has locked up some feature you thought up. Most software patents are obvious and not novel, and elimination of that hurdle increases programming output.
I can't see any likely future in which we'd be better off with the course we've set vs complete abolition of all IP laws. It would take some getting used to, and some would purposefully sabotage themselves to prove a point, but overall, the world would be a much better place if all I laws (patents as well) were abolished, than to continue the system as done today.
Of course, there is a middle ground, closer to what existed when the Constitution was first ratified where the terms were much shorter and patents could only be of "things" rather than "thoughts" that is better than either extreme. But that was perverted to what we have now, so I'd opt for complete abolition than a middle ground which the content exploiters immediately strive to overthrow, as they have already done once.
Learn to love Alaska
You mean many modern artists who have used previous record company contracts to build a substantial nation-/worldwide fan base. Although there are a few counterexamples (the exceptions that prove the rule), they are fairly few in number.
Does this mean that artists get screwed? Yes and no. The artists may not make a lot (if any) money, but their expenses can be covered and it's a good opportunity, due to the nationwide promotion and touring, even if the recording doesn't pan out. If you are in the right place at the right time with the right amount of business savvy and right mindset, you can parlay this promotion into a successful music career, even if you don't make a lot of money on the record company deal itself.
Even better, the record company may drop you after the first couple albums, freeing you with your (now) national contacts to make decent money afterward (at least more money faster than if you played struggling regional artist for years).
The main issue is to go into the process with your eyes wide open - they will try to screw you. But you can screw back and take any advantages you get. Chances are you won't make money on the record contract, but you can use the contacts and fan base gained in the process to promote your career long afterward and, if you're smart enough, "fail successfully".
That is all.
An "angel" offering fame and fortune but demanding complete ownership of the artist sounds more like a deal with the devil to me.
Suppose a person had memorized a book or a passage from it, or learned to play a song on their own instrument. Copyright can prevent a person from being free to speak or otherwise offer their own knowledge to a willing listener. There's no more important right a person can have than that.