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US Government Targets Pirate Bay and Other 'Piracy Havens' (torrentfreak.com)
The US Government has listed some of the largest piracy websites and other copyright-infringing venues. The USTR calls on foreign countries to take action against popular piracy sites such as The Pirate Bay, which has important "symbolic value," according to the authorities. In addition, stream-ripping is mentioned as an emerging threat. TorrentFreak adds: The overview is largely based on input from industry groups including the RIAA and MPAA, who submitted their recommendations a few weeks ago. While the USTR admits that the list is not meant to reflect legal violations, the goal of the review is to motivate owners and foreign Governments to take appropriate action and reduce piracy. "The United States encourages all responsible authorities to intensify efforts to combat piracy and counterfeiting, and to use the information contained in the Notorious Markets List to pursue legal actions where appropriate," the USTR announced.
And look who's talking.No conservative rally, meeting or speech this year has been without a violation of some artist's rights, because they just played whatever song they like, without prior giving a crap about the copyright owners' consent,
It's also a trademark issue, since artists usually don't want people to think that they endorse the moron who uses it without consent.
http://www.thelegalartist.com/...
And they should also go back and read the original text about copyright. It is supposed to be a protection against copies FOR A LIMITED TIME. Anything over two decades is completely insane. Architects don't get paid every year by everyone living in the buildings they designed.
It's absolutely not a copyright issue, but not for the reason mentioned in the article you cite. So long as the venue in which a rally is held holds a license from the publisher through the appropriate licensing agency, a rally's organizer can perform a musical work publicly. In the USA, this is either BMI or ASCAP depending on the song in question.
But this article is right about trademarks. An owner of a mark can use one of two legal theories: infringement or dilution. Infringement happens only within a field of use. Dilution applies to particularly famous trademarks and can cross fields of use, but it's quite a bit harder for a mark owner to prove fame.
And throw that temper-tantrum so the world really knows just what the law in the US means. Let them see how our leaders grovel at the feet of the moneyed class for crumbs to run their campaigns with. Let them see you toadying like the good little servants you are.
Meanwhile we'll be over here, ignoring you. Going to concerts, buying merch, and finding ways to pay the artists directly without going through your precious machines that do little more than siphon off "value". The game's changed and you could have changed with it, made it a place where you could have made a profit (albeit smaller) but smarter people beat you to the punch. Now you all bleed at the altar of Apple, Amazon, and Google while we go around the corner and get what we want for nearly free.
Burn in hell you corporate, backward assholes. You could have made the world a better place but chose money over humanity once again.
The final purpose of all law is to create a 'better' society, where better is the usually the hotly disputed point.
So one of the 'unbalances' of current especially United States copy write laws is between what is commonly considered 'fair use' and what actually and legally is 'fair use'. Digital technology only adds a layer of complication to that.
Since action begins with citizens thinking and understanding I'd like to encourage everyone here to think about some questions. I will try not to be too leading or interject my own opinions too heavily in doing so, forgive me if I fail.
Given that : The reason copy write law exists at all is to provide income for the generators of content that they would not have without such laws.
There seems to be a general consensus that without such laws the quality and availability of useful works will suffer. ( How true is that? for which types of works?)
What is the proper balance between product and income?
How much income per hour/ per work is fair?
Should copy writes be transferable to family after the death of the creator?
What if the creator is a corporation?
How does that server the purpose of the society and the law.
How do you mitigate the ability to control society through media by maintaining copy write on the songs, phrases, memes etc that become part of the daily culture by the nature of popular art?
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
tl;dr: UBI solves the problem for single-author works, while commissions are a much better way to produce collaborative works.
I personally feel the best type of content is the type that will be created even if the creator knows their only reward is to have others consume it. The best books I've read are written by people who simply wanted to say something. The best music came from people who wanted to exhibit their musical ability. They may or may not be paid. It doesn't matter. As long as they have enough to live on, they will create those works. Because to not do so would be suffering.
To support these people as they create their first works, and for many other reasons which I won't go into, we should have UBI. After they earn some recognition, they can either take commissions from people who like their work or just continue living off of UBI and create what they want to create rather than what other people want.
So the question of economics really only matters when it's in a medium that requires collaboration by many people, such as a movie, because it's nearly impossible to get hundreds of people to all buy in on an idea and then spend months working on it. Plus, not all of them are in critical roles where passion is necessary. The guy that holds the microphone over the actors' heads for example.
This is where money comes in. The most important role of money in society is to organize and distribute scarce resources. It tells individuals how important something is. When the microphone guy asks, should I work on movie A or movie B, the answer is simple: the one that will pay him more money.
But then, how does a movie producer decide how much to pay everyone working on the movie? Well, that's a complicated question. But the practical answer is: he makes a guess. If he guesses wrong, he loses money. Over time, the worst-guessing producers goes bankrupt and stops making movies, and the quality of movies goes up.
All well and good right? Not at all!
You see, artistic works are very hit and miss. As investments, they're very risky. To pour half a billion into a movie, then hoping that it's not one of the 10% of movies that only makes a quarter of it back, is going to give any investor a heart attack. To mitigate the risk, producers do many things that are at best unhelpful to the artistic quality of the work, and at worst, stifles any creativity and novelty. They are: marketing and advertising, targeting certain viewership groups, removing potentially difficult or contentious themes, breaking a long work out into several parts, making unnecessary sequels and prequels that dilute the impact of a story, avoiding tragedies, and the worst of all, doing what was profitable last time.
This is how we end up with so many "flicks". Action flicks, romance flicks, comedy flicks... Now the theme seems to be superheroes, because everybody loves superheroes right? Plus, several superhero movies made a lot of money. "There can't possibly be too many superhero movies!" says the producer.
They know these types of movies won't make it huge, but they also don't lose much either. They are safe investments, which in turn, means they're safe artistically. But for artistic works, safe just means unremarkable, uninteresting, and of little value. It's like scientific research. You're only a genius if you're the first to discover it.
So how do we get away from making tons and tons of movies that are all basically the same? Well, the problem stems from risk. Investors don't like risk, so they avoid novel things, and therefore stifles creativity. But really, the risky part is the producers guessing what people would like to see. So the better option is to simply ask people what they like.
And the way to do that is with commissions. The creator first comes up with some ideas. Then people decide whether they really want to see that idea as a movie. They pool their money together, and viola, the movie has a budget.
With the tech
Two decades after the original artist's/etc demise would be fair. Perpetual copyright doesn't protect dead originators, and to make copyright perpetual changes it dramatically.
Maybe reconsider perpetual compensation? a perpetual right to prevent modification and ensure attribution, but to be paid forever? How do we reconcile this?
And corporations need to be a different case.
Music copyrights have nothing to do with the artist, therefore there is no correlation with the artist's lifetime. All music copyrights are owned by the Label (and RIAA member, if in the USA) which, as a corp[oration, has a theoretically infinite lifetime.
Passing the copyrights to the Label is a condition of every record contract. As an artist, either you are published, have a record release and have zero copyrights, or your are unpublished, unreleased, unknown and own them all, but no-one cares. There is such a thing as the Independent record release, which is an attempt to retain the copyrights by the artist(s), but you won't find those CDs for sale in most retailers or available as digital files on most mainstream download sites.