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What Could Have Been In the Public Domain Today, But Isn't
An anonymous reader writes with an article from Duke Law on what would have entered the public domain today were it not for the copyright extensions enacted in 1978. From the article: "What could have been entering the public domain in the U.S. on January 1, 2013? Under the law that existed until 1978, works from 1956. The films Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, The Best Things in Life Are Free, Forbidden Planet, The Ten Commandments, and Around the World in 80 Days; the stories 101 Dalmations and Phillip K. Dick's The Minority Report; the songs 'Que Sera, Sera' and 'Heartbreak Hotel', and more. What is entering the public domain this year? Nothing."
And Rick Falkvinge shares his predictions for what the copyright monopoly will try this year. As a bit of a music fan, excessive copyright hits home often: the entire discographies of many artists I like have been out of print for at least a decade. Should copyright even be as long as in the pre-1978 law? Is the Berne Convention obsolete and in need of breaking to actually preserve cultural history?
Jamendo, bitches! This is not an ad or sp am, please read on... here's a solution to part of the problem. You'll never get congress whose members have been bought and paid for by RIAA thugs to do anything helpful or beneficial to the general public about the increasingly ridiculous US copyright law, so forget getting congress to fix the ever increasingly glaring problems with copyright extension. Any day now I expect to hear that copyrights will be extended to 500 years after the death of the last relative of the creator of the work... or some other bullshit like that. It's really sad.
I have an extensive collection of copyrighted music on CD's, that I paid for, but whenever I hear new music, I am galled that if I want to pay for it legally, mostly I will be funneling money into the RIAA's warchest that it will use to try to prosecute me for the injuries they imagine I have done to them and their precious, goddamned fucking intellectual, imaginary property, while claiming they're doing it all for the "artists" who generally only get a few pennies on every dollar people squander on legally purchased music. So I am LOATH to add any more new discs to my collection.
I was therefore delighted when I found jamendo.com, a site with tens of thousands of albums of Creative Commons, Free (as in beer) music, much of which is admittedly weird or unappealing, but there are a lot of gems like Hungry Lucy (a personal favorite I found on Jamendo) whose music you can legally download and redistribute, much you can even remix and add your own touch to, depending on what restrictions the artists put on the music, all while saying "FUCK YOU, RIAA!" to those RIAA thieving cocksuckers who want to steal your money while complaining about us stealing from them while they steal from the artists they claim to represent. Lots of great free music, (including an album by The Swine called "Fuck the RIAA!" which is awesome!) and you can view it ranked by popularity so if you don't want to listen to some of the weirder stuff... you have options is all I'm saying.
What we NEED is a Jamendo for movies and television. A place to go to download free as in beer and speech movies and television. That'd be awsome! Well, take care all. and a Happy New Year to all, and to all... FREE MUSIC!!!