Music Industry Argues Works Entering Public Domain Are Not In Public Interest

An anonymous reader writes: With news that Canada intends to extend the term of copyright for sound recordings and performers, the recording industry is now pushing the change by arguing that works entering the public domain is not in the public interest. It is hard to see how anyone can credibly claim that works are "lost" to the public domain and that the public interest in not served by increased public access, but if anyone would make the claim, it would be the recording industry.

Comments

Re:I'll be Bach

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

Yeah, poor Mozart was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave

Mozart was buried as a regular citizen. His grave was reused after a decade because that was the custom for all citizens; that wasn't an indication of poverty. The idea that he was buried in a "pauper's grave" is false.

Mozart's financial difficulties weren't a result of lack of income, but because he spent too much and wasn't prudent with money. He actually made a good amount of money from his works and his performances.

"It's a Wonderful Life" was in the public domain

[catchblue22]

Frank Capra's classic "It's a Wonderful Life" was largely forgotten in its time. In 1974, possibly due to an error, its copyright lapsed. TV networks, eager for low cost holiday fare, basically had this film running on a loop during certain times of the year. Then, Paramount managed to pull the movie back into copyright. And low and behold, the showings of this great movie slowed to a trickle once again. Public interest indeed. These media industry slime-balls are evil. Literally evil.

Classical music. Public domain.

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. Even in cases where published classical music - and its orchestration - is in the public domain for many decades, modern performances of it are often not. They involve copyrights with royalties to the performer and various technicians involved. It is necessary to either (i) get releases from the performers and possibly those technicians that the performance will be released to the public domain, or (ii) the performer releases them to the public domain, and has such a condition in the employment contracts of any technicians.

There are efforts to issue classical music in the public domain, especially by musopen.org and kimiko-piano.org, which are mirrored on archive.org. There are loads of public domain classical pieces at musopen.org. We have contributed to two of Musopen's kickstarter campaings (the Musopen DVD, and Musopen's complete works of Chopin), as well as two of Kimiko Ishizaka's (Open Goldberg Variations and The Well-tempered Clavier).

Re:Would you kindly cut out the political crap?

[cob666]

If you still have any respect for this forum within Slashdot, would you kindly cut out your political crap, please?

As this is a thread discussing the action of GREEDY ASSHOLES of the Music Industry, can you please stick to the context?

Subservience to the vested elite is not limited to the Conservatives - the critters on the other side of the isle, the Liberals, have also proven to be doing the same thing

It is thus an utter disgust for you kind to pollute this conversation by astroturfing the 'conservative vs liberal' debate

Extending copyright is a legislative action which means it has to be enacted by politicians. Those 'GREEDY ASSHOLES' you refer to would not be able to get away with their heavy handed tactics if they didn't have political clout through lobbying and campaign finance.