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Proposed Chinese Copyright Changes Would Encourage Re-Use
New submitter BBCS writes "The National Copyright Administration of the People's Republic of China ('NCAC') is seeking public comments on a controversial draft amendment to China's copyright law. A number of recording artists and musicians have reacted strongly against this proposed amendment because it appears to encourage using others works without compensation. The amendments that have drawn particular ire are article 46 & 48. Per Article 46, one does not need consent to make recordings of another person's musical work if 3 months have passed since such work was published. Per Article 48, to use such person's musical work, one must contact the NCAC, identify the published material and its author, and within 1 month of use, submit a usage fee as per the NCAC, to facilitate the distribution of payment to applicable parties. I wonder what happens when someone applies to make use of Chinese Democracy by Guns N' Roses." What would you do, if copyright were so strongly time-limited?
China has no history of embedded civil code; it has always been run from the *center*, by powerful interests that made the law punitive only when one upset "the natural order of things" - e.g. poisoning a rice paddy, or carrying a sign in 1967 that claimed "capitalism is good" - those things would get you killed. However, if you stole someone intellectual property, the dispute was settled strictly between the parties, without the intervention by a civil authority; essentially, it was between you and the thief. In those situations, the person who had the most political power, or local connections, would win. This is simply the way things have been, until very recently, in China.
In other words, no LEGAL sense of protected IP. That is starting to change, slowly, as the world gets wired up, but it will take a while. Another way to say this is that many, many people in China have no problem with lifting someone else IP, because that's the way things have always been. btw, this doesn't make China a thieving culture, but rather a culture where there have been no strictures embedded in civil code to prevent this sort of thing. This is one more reason why international companies need to be cautious with IP in China, and understand how to play hard ball when they have IP stolen.
What would you do, if copyright were so strongly time-limited?
Celebrate.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
Something like author's lifetime + 20 years.
If so, please explain to me why someone that does a single song could live out of it all of his life. That's not fair, IMO. Stallman (and others) are proposing date of publication + 10 years. THAT seems more fair to many, and I even think that's quite long. Originally, the first copyright laws were about publication + 14 years.
To mod your first responder funny, or respond to you?
While 100+ years is extremely absurd, I think 3 months is on the other end of extreme absurdity. I do believe the US founders had a pretty good concept of copyright limitations, and that should be something we return to. A maximum of 28 years, renewed at 14, seems like a fine separation of of concerns to allow an artist to recoup what they ca before it goes into the public domain.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.