It doesn't work like that. If 512 is applicable, it basically short-circuits the case and keeps the ISP that is relying on it out of danger. But it must be complied with fully in order to be applicable. A feedback form is not good enough, however. ISPs either comply or they don't; good faith attempts are not good enough.
There are some differences. Google isn't a contributory, vicarious, or inducing infringer, while most of these sites are. Also, Google complies with the 512 safe harbor that protects it while also requiring it to honor takedowns; AFAICT none of these sites do.
The common carrier idea has never really flown that well in the ISP world. The real safe harbor here is the 512 exception, and it more or less treats search engines and providers of material placed there by users the same. Of course, it also requires that the ISPs in question take affirmative steps to be protected, and that they honor takedown requests by copyright holders.
The actual reason for suing them is probably because there are fewer NZB sites than there are news providers, and it's strategically best to go for the head of the snake. If you go after a search site, you impair all their users on many different news providers (and may be able to identify a lot of them too). If you go after a news provider, you impair their users (etc.), but not any from other providers. If you go after uploaders, you impair all their downloaders. If you go after downloaders, you only get them. So start at the head of the snake, and you'll get the most bang for your buck.
That would be the pilot episode. The visitor is Riker, who had just come aboard (and wasn't terribly familiar with Enterprise's features, I guess) and was looking for Data.
Law school is 3 years usually (though people who work while in school often are in a 4 year program). If the school permits it, you could take summer classes and get down to 2 1/2 years. I'm sure that with some work (summer classes, AP classes in high school) one could graduate from college in 3 years or so as well.
So it's not really that big an accomlishment. She's at about the bottom of the age range for new lawyers, but I wouldn't say she's exceptional just based on that.
No. As is made clear in 17 USC 501 and 106 when read together, distribution is a form of infringement, but not the whole thing. As a practical matter it stands out, since it can be tough for copyright holders to notice infringements that don't involve distribution. But you can infringe without distributing.
For patents being filed now, they last 20 years from the date they were filed. This is plenty of time to get to market, and remember that you may be able to make improvements and get patents on them so that even when the first patent runs out, you've moved on and your competitors are still in a less advantageous position. Likewise, the reputation you build while you have the patent can provide you with an advantage in the future. For example, patents on drugs such as prozac or viagra will eventually expire, making generics available, but many people will stick with the brand-names they're used to, even if they have to pay more for exactly the same thing.
Courts do not ignore the free exercise clause. There's plenty of cases involving it. Perhaps there are fewer cases on it due to fewer facts giving rise to it (though I don't know their relative proportions) but that still isn't something to blame courts about. There aren't many Third Amendment cases either, but only because the government's been pretty good about that one.
Also, you need to read Marsh v. Chambers and the dissent. Basically, the Court made an exception for that situation, and that situation alone. Schools don't get treated like Congress. And if they were treated alike, the dissent indicates that Congress et al would have to stop.
Of course, students may pray all they like, and no one can stop them. But they also have to be non-disruptive and attend to their responsibilities. And the school itself cannot promote prayer or lead the students in it, which is what your typical establishment clause case for schools is about.
It's hardly immoral. An agreement is just an agreement. It has no inherent moral dimension to it. It could be an immoral agreement, in which case the moral thing to do is to break it (e.g. if a house has a restrictive covenant that forces all later buyers to not sell to minorities, it's moral and legal to break it). And if it was a particularly moral agreement, it might be immoral to break it.
But most agreements are pretty amoral.
And yes, life isn't fair. But it's important to reject unfairness and to strive for things to be fair. And if this means not allowing some conditions to be set, and stopping those who would promote unfairness, then so be it. "Life's not fair" is not a philosophy to live by; it's a problem to be overcome.
Almost. Facts and other non-copyrightable parts of copyrightable works are not protected.
So if you have a map that shows the US as being within North America, and that's where I learn that fact from, I can copy that. Maps have very weak protection, actually. Their artistic elements (whatever happened to sea monsters anyway), the choices of what factual information to include and what not to include, etc. are protectable. The names of places, their geographic relationship to one another, etc. are not. It's perfectly fine to mine other people's copyrighted works for public domain information that happens to be within them.
I think you're having some confusion over the idea-expression dichotomy.
Ideas, including processes, cannot be copyrighted, but expressions of those ideas can be.
So if I write down my recipe for Ice Cream Soup, anyone else can copy the process I'm describing. But the way I describe it can't be copied. Of course, if it can only be described one way, or only a few ways, then even the expression can't be protected, since it has effectively merged with the idea.
I can write my recipe in the most simple way possible, but this is likely to merge. I can help my chances by writing it in a more creative fashion. Poetic recipes, maybe. Or with more descriptive language.
So for software, the process by which a program does something is not copyrightable. How it is written -- the creative choices as to what variables to name where, how to arrange the loops, etc. -- is copyrightable. Write a program that does exactly the same thing, exactly the same way, but where the source is different, and you're fine.
In fact, since source is so rarely released, it could even be identical, and likely will be for some common procedures. Accidental identicality isn't what copyright is against; deliberate copying is. (Of course, the more complex and creative a work is, the less likely it is that someone will independently write exactly the same thing, so people can legitimately be suspicious)
So while, yes, the instructions that comprise software are not copyrightable, the wording of those instructions is, even if different wordings could accomplish the same outcome.
Patents, on the other hand, deal with processes, regardless of many details of implementation. Thus, the Compuserve patent shut down people who wrote GIF software, not because of how they expressed the underlying process, but because they used the relevant process at all.
Well, I didn't say I supported the 2-3 year term, just that it wasn't crazy. Personally I tend to favor a 5 year term that is usually renewable a few times, maybe up to 25 years tops. But I'm open to discussion.
require registration and markings to get copyright protection.
FYI, the proper term is notice, not markings.
copyrights with extensions possible indefinately for an increasing fee.
That would still be unconstitutional. The term has to have an end date, even with renewals. It can't potentially go on forever.
To protect somewhat from the problems the shorter dates might cause, implement a system like the patent system offers - that is you can get a "pre-copyright" protection on works for a nominal fee of say $100, that lasts till the date of publish. Of course, to get this, you must send in electronic copies of your work as it progresses, say once every six months. If you stop working on it, then the protection expires - you must actively be working towards publishing your work to get protection.
You seem to be describing something like the provisional patent application system in the US. I think your proposed fee is a bit high, compared to the current $30 for a copyright registration. (Though it's well in line with the significantly higher fees the PTO tends to charge) I don't know if your idea on deposit of incomplete works is all that practical, though I do agree with something like diligence toward creating the work and bringing it to publication as being a requirement.
Personally, I'd be willing to have this be automatic, but only for unpublished works, where publication has a very broad definition (including public performances), where rights could not be asserted until registration, where damages are limited to actual damages and profits, where the term is still quite limited, and where as already mentioned, diligence has to be shown.
registering with a non DRMed copy dropped off at the library of congress.
I would beef up deposit somewhat. Deposit of a software binary is not very useful. It's hard to materially modify the binary without well-documented source. So I would add supplemental deposit requirements, e.g. source for software, elements for audio and visual works, etc. though not earlier drafts or other materials not needed to make changes to the work on which copyright is claimed.
$10 for the second renewal for year 3
FYI, you're basically proposing a 1+1+1... system, rather than the 14+14 you mentioned earlier. I like granularity too, but I think that 2-5 years is probably a good number. The paperwork burden shouldn't be too high, even though we do want works to lapse as soon as the author stops caring about them enough to renew.
Because works have to be registered with a central database, it would be trivial to create a system to know for sure (without many legal fees and years of looking) if a work was copyrighted, and to who. This would both allow an easy way to know if it's public domain, and allow quick contact if copyrighted for setting up a license.
You might want to add a copyright number system to notice requirements then, much as we have with patents. (Trademarks have serial numbers, but no one cares much outside of PTO correspondence since their whole point is to serve as identifiers) Also, you'd need to beef up the recordation provisions so that transfers and exclusive licenses had to be recorded for validity and had to be kept up to date. This implies the need for penalties for noncompliance, mind.
It only prohibits the Federal Government from abridging the freedom of speech. Local state authorites are not Congress. It only prohibits Congress.
Let me refer you to the 14th Amendment incorporation doctrine (and n.b. that state constitutions all AFAIK have guarantees that are the same or even stronger than this).
It seperates the Government from the Church, not the church from the Government.
No, it does both. If the government cannot engage in dealings of a religious capacity it can't take orders from a religion either. To do so would be to have one of those religions be officially on top, and then you're back doing what even you agree isn't permissible.
So, the church can influence the Federal Government quite a bit. And they can practicaly run State Governments if it is allowed in that state's constitution.
Let me remind you of the republican clause of the Constitution as well.
If you don't like that, move to a different state. That is the great thing about this country we live in.
No, the great thing about this country is that you can be so wrong that I wouldn't trust you if you said that the sun rises in the east, and yet we're secure enough, knowing that you'll always be marginalized as a nut, that we don't have to lock you away or shoot you or otherwise get our hands dirty in order to keep you from being dangerous to others. It's great.
If the distributor could wait for the copyright to expire before distributing, why would they ever have to pay performers/songwriters?
Two reasons: First, because the amount paid to artists is usually pretty minimal. Artists don't usually have a good bargaining position until they've gotten established. So if you have your A&R men bring in five promising bands, and one of them won't commit to a five album contract, you just don't bother doing business with them. They're unlikely to be so promising that making them happy is worth it, an you've got four other bands that are more cooperative. In the grand scheme of things, you usually have a number of larger expenses to deal with than this. So it's not a big deal to just pay them.
Second, because you, as the publisher, want there to be a copyright. That way you're the only one who is publishing these songs, and you don't have to compete in an open market for exact copies of the same thing. That is, you're not trying to make money as a supplier of a commodity -- yet. You'll make more money, if it's popular, so long as you're the exclusive source. It's therefore worth it to have to pay the artists whatever small amount they agreed to.
If you want to seperate the lyric and music copyright from the sound recording copyright,
They are seperate. Maybe they're held by the same person, but they're different works, and therefore get different copyrights. Just like how the copyright on a book is distinct from the copyright on the movie version of the book. And when the book copyright expires, it means that other people can make movies based upon it, but that doesn't give them the right to freely copy what was added in the movie, so long as it still is copyrighted.
In fact, the songwriter and composer get the copyright in the lyrics and music, and not the performer. The performer only gets royalties from the copyright in the sound recording.
Yes. Each artist only gets royalties -- if at all -- based on the work that he did. It would hardly be fair otherwise.
So, by shortening the copyright on the sound recording, you penalise the performers by shortening their revenue stream - it's not only the recording companies that get screwed.
They're not being shortened. They're just shorter mainly by virtue of a) being rather new (copyrights on recordings are not an old idea) and b) being treated shabbily by the whole Berne-personality-of-an-author crowd, who are schmucks anyway, let's face it.
Anyway, you've yet to make a point against short copyrights, particularly one that considers the public interest.
which would deny that author what I see as rightful income, as being unfair to the authors of those rare works
Well, whether Lucas gets a shitload of income from Star Wars for 20 years or for 95 years, he still ends up with a shitload of income. Is it that injust to have the earlier cutoff, if that cutoff would a) still be sufficient to get him to have created the movie, thus delivering more bang for the buck, and b) would yield a greater benefit to the public in that more works hit the public domain sooner? I don't see it as a problem, but then I believe copyright is meant to promote the progress of science, rather than to promote the bank account of one-in-a-million artists.
I think that a 3 year term would STILL be much too short.
I agree. I think five years for software, and maybe as many as five five-year terms (if renewed for them) for everything else. But three years isn't crazy insane. It just might not be ideal. I think we can all agree that so long as we're honestly looking for the point where the public benefit is greatest that we can disagree as to where it happens to be. Eventually we'll home in on it.
Copyright before then really only applied to written works and maps, whereas they now apply to nearly everything - photos, movies, even archecture
No.
Berne is from 1886. The first US federal copyright law (which isn't the first that applied here) dates back to 1790 and covered books and maps. The 1802 Act added prints and etchings. 1831 added musical compositions. 1856 added dramatic compositions. 1865 added photographs. 1870 added paintings, statues, etc.
Berne, incidentally, didn't add things like photos and movies until the 20th century. It lagged behind the US.
And architecture is a stupid thing to have copyrights for. Do you think that people won't design and build new buildings without copyrights? Do you think it's appropriate to give copyrights away without any public benefit that stems from them? I don't. I like to spend my copyright 'dollar' frugally and responsibly.
(It makes me wonder if speech is copyrighted... and if not, why not? justification for why everything written or recorded is copyrighted easily extends to speech).
Speech isn't written or recorded. It's just in the air. Since the Constitution only allows for copyrights in "writings" speech is never copyrightable. A recording of speech is copyrightable, but not the underlying speech itself. Speech that merely is a performance of a pre-written work isn't copyrightable, but the pre-written work is.
The US has taken some stabs at further undermining its own Constitutional law on this. We're all waiting to see how it turns out, but the situation is rare to begin with. In any event, even the assholes that support this idea can't claim that it falls under copyright.
US laws were totally different from world standards until 1976
I take it that you don't personally know anyone who creates works for which copyright is important.
Well, I was a professional artist before I went into law, so I'd have to disagree with you there.
Unfortunately, it simply isn't economically feasible to go to court. An individual artist does not have the capital to pursue litigation against a large publishing company.
Well, that's a bit surprising. Copyright is quite favorable to plaintiffs. Artists can get their choice of statutory damages or actual damages and profits. And they can recover reasonable fees and costs. Given a good case, lawyers would not be averse to taking a case on contingency, so that they only need to be paid if the plaintiff wins, and their payment is a percentage of the award (usually a third).
Additionally, even if your argument there had merit, why mention it? It really has nothing to do with whether registrations are necessary to get a copyright or not.
In any case, if this is happening to your Mom, maybe she ought to find a copyright attorney so that she can protect herself.
Now can you imagine what it would be like if every single work had to be registered with a government office to get any legal protection whatsoever?
It would not be appreciably different. Presently, you can't bring a suit without registering, and unless you've registered prior to the infringement you can't get the statutory damages that make copyright suits so much fun for the plaintiff.
Plus, it's easy to imagine that world: we lived in it until 1978, and the world wasn't a seething mass of anarchy without automatic copyrights, was it?
At any rate, I don't think any government agency would have the capacity to handle the volume of registrations with anything approaching efficiency.
In 2004, the most recent year that the statistics are out for, the Copyright Office handled well over 600,000 registrations and had brought the time it takes to issue a registration certificate down to 80 days from when the claim is received. Of course, since the time is backdated to the date of receipt (so that authors aren't punished for inefficiencies of the CO) it isn't a big deal.
The cost for a registration is a paltry $30. If you don't expect that a copyright on a work is going to be worth that, costs and a decent profit, then maybe you should rethink being an artist that relies on copyrights. Some artists rely on copies -- an actual Picasso was worth far more than a duplicate. Small artists at shows generally sell little paintings, sculptures, etc. for which there is not much chance of piracy. The physical object is what's valuable. And other artists just get a day job waiting on tables or whatever. Art that isn't economically viable is fine, but copyright won't help. You would need grants.
Slashdot Mirror
Might've been me, though I don't give legal advice out on /.
With regard to the kinds of works we're talking about, it's flatly illegal for people in the US to download from Allofmp3.
It doesn't work like that. If 512 is applicable, it basically short-circuits the case and keeps the ISP that is relying on it out of danger. But it must be complied with fully in order to be applicable. A feedback form is not good enough, however. ISPs either comply or they don't; good faith attempts are not good enough.
There are some differences. Google isn't a contributory, vicarious, or inducing infringer, while most of these sites are. Also, Google complies with the 512 safe harbor that protects it while also requiring it to honor takedowns; AFAICT none of these sites do.
The common carrier idea has never really flown that well in the ISP world. The real safe harbor here is the 512 exception, and it more or less treats search engines and providers of material placed there by users the same. Of course, it also requires that the ISPs in question take affirmative steps to be protected, and that they honor takedown requests by copyright holders.
The actual reason for suing them is probably because there are fewer NZB sites than there are news providers, and it's strategically best to go for the head of the snake. If you go after a search site, you impair all their users on many different news providers (and may be able to identify a lot of them too). If you go after a news provider, you impair their users (etc.), but not any from other providers. If you go after uploaders, you impair all their downloaders. If you go after downloaders, you only get them. So start at the head of the snake, and you'll get the most bang for your buck.
Yes, please think of the hookers.
Would I be able to remote-start the car by whistling for it?
You have a funny way of spelling 'complain on the Internet.'
That would be the pilot episode. The visitor is Riker, who had just come aboard (and wasn't terribly familiar with Enterprise's features, I guess) and was looking for Data.
Law school is 3 years usually (though people who work while in school often are in a 4 year program). If the school permits it, you could take summer classes and get down to 2 1/2 years. I'm sure that with some work (summer classes, AP classes in high school) one could graduate from college in 3 years or so as well.
So it's not really that big an accomlishment. She's at about the bottom of the age range for new lawyers, but I wouldn't say she's exceptional just based on that.
No. As is made clear in 17 USC 501 and 106 when read together, distribution is a form of infringement, but not the whole thing. As a practical matter it stands out, since it can be tough for copyright holders to notice infringements that don't involve distribution. But you can infringe without distributing.
For patents being filed now, they last 20 years from the date they were filed. This is plenty of time to get to market, and remember that you may be able to make improvements and get patents on them so that even when the first patent runs out, you've moved on and your competitors are still in a less advantageous position. Likewise, the reputation you build while you have the patent can provide you with an advantage in the future. For example, patents on drugs such as prozac or viagra will eventually expire, making generics available, but many people will stick with the brand-names they're used to, even if they have to pay more for exactly the same thing.
Courts do not ignore the free exercise clause. There's plenty of cases involving it. Perhaps there are fewer cases on it due to fewer facts giving rise to it (though I don't know their relative proportions) but that still isn't something to blame courts about. There aren't many Third Amendment cases either, but only because the government's been pretty good about that one.
Also, you need to read Marsh v. Chambers and the dissent. Basically, the Court made an exception for that situation, and that situation alone. Schools don't get treated like Congress. And if they were treated alike, the dissent indicates that Congress et al would have to stop.
Of course, students may pray all they like, and no one can stop them. But they also have to be non-disruptive and attend to their responsibilities. And the school itself cannot promote prayer or lead the students in it, which is what your typical establishment clause case for schools is about.
It's hardly immoral. An agreement is just an agreement. It has no inherent moral dimension to it. It could be an immoral agreement, in which case the moral thing to do is to break it (e.g. if a house has a restrictive covenant that forces all later buyers to not sell to minorities, it's moral and legal to break it). And if it was a particularly moral agreement, it might be immoral to break it.
But most agreements are pretty amoral.
And yes, life isn't fair. But it's important to reject unfairness and to strive for things to be fair. And if this means not allowing some conditions to be set, and stopping those who would promote unfairness, then so be it. "Life's not fair" is not a philosophy to live by; it's a problem to be overcome.
Almost. Facts and other non-copyrightable parts of copyrightable works are not protected.
So if you have a map that shows the US as being within North America, and that's where I learn that fact from, I can copy that. Maps have very weak protection, actually. Their artistic elements (whatever happened to sea monsters anyway), the choices of what factual information to include and what not to include, etc. are protectable. The names of places, their geographic relationship to one another, etc. are not. It's perfectly fine to mine other people's copyrighted works for public domain information that happens to be within them.
I think you're having some confusion over the idea-expression dichotomy.
Ideas, including processes, cannot be copyrighted, but expressions of those ideas can be.
So if I write down my recipe for Ice Cream Soup, anyone else can copy the process I'm describing. But the way I describe it can't be copied. Of course, if it can only be described one way, or only a few ways, then even the expression can't be protected, since it has effectively merged with the idea.
I can write my recipe in the most simple way possible, but this is likely to merge. I can help my chances by writing it in a more creative fashion. Poetic recipes, maybe. Or with more descriptive language.
So for software, the process by which a program does something is not copyrightable. How it is written -- the creative choices as to what variables to name where, how to arrange the loops, etc. -- is copyrightable. Write a program that does exactly the same thing, exactly the same way, but where the source is different, and you're fine.
In fact, since source is so rarely released, it could even be identical, and likely will be for some common procedures. Accidental identicality isn't what copyright is against; deliberate copying is. (Of course, the more complex and creative a work is, the less likely it is that someone will independently write exactly the same thing, so people can legitimately be suspicious)
So while, yes, the instructions that comprise software are not copyrightable, the wording of those instructions is, even if different wordings could accomplish the same outcome.
Patents, on the other hand, deal with processes, regardless of many details of implementation. Thus, the Compuserve patent shut down people who wrote GIF software, not because of how they expressed the underlying process, but because they used the relevant process at all.
Books pick up most of their revenue in about three months of release in given media (hardbacks, paperbacks, audio, etc.).
It's slower-paced than movies, but it's not that slow.
Well, I didn't say I supported the 2-3 year term, just that it wasn't crazy. Personally I tend to favor a 5 year term that is usually renewable a few times, maybe up to 25 years tops. But I'm open to discussion.
require registration and markings to get copyright protection.
FYI, the proper term is notice, not markings.
copyrights with extensions possible indefinately for an increasing fee.
That would still be unconstitutional. The term has to have an end date, even with renewals. It can't potentially go on forever.
To protect somewhat from the problems the shorter dates might cause, implement a system like the patent system offers - that is you can get a "pre-copyright" protection on works for a nominal fee of say $100, that lasts till the date of publish. Of course, to get this, you must send in electronic copies of your work as it progresses, say once every six months. If you stop working on it, then the protection expires - you must actively be working towards publishing your work to get protection.
You seem to be describing something like the provisional patent application system in the US. I think your proposed fee is a bit high, compared to the current $30 for a copyright registration. (Though it's well in line with the significantly higher fees the PTO tends to charge) I don't know if your idea on deposit of incomplete works is all that practical, though I do agree with something like diligence toward creating the work and bringing it to publication as being a requirement.
Personally, I'd be willing to have this be automatic, but only for unpublished works, where publication has a very broad definition (including public performances), where rights could not be asserted until registration, where damages are limited to actual damages and profits, where the term is still quite limited, and where as already mentioned, diligence has to be shown.
registering with a non DRMed copy dropped off at the library of congress.
I would beef up deposit somewhat. Deposit of a software binary is not very useful. It's hard to materially modify the binary without well-documented source. So I would add supplemental deposit requirements, e.g. source for software, elements for audio and visual works, etc. though not earlier drafts or other materials not needed to make changes to the work on which copyright is claimed.
$10 for the second renewal for year 3
FYI, you're basically proposing a 1+1+1... system, rather than the 14+14 you mentioned earlier. I like granularity too, but I think that 2-5 years is probably a good number. The paperwork burden shouldn't be too high, even though we do want works to lapse as soon as the author stops caring about them enough to renew.
Because works have to be registered with a central database, it would be trivial to create a system to know for sure (without many legal fees and years of looking) if a work was copyrighted, and to who. This would both allow an easy way to know if it's public domain, and allow quick contact if copyrighted for setting up a license.
You might want to add a copyright number system to notice requirements then, much as we have with patents. (Trademarks have serial numbers, but no one cares much outside of PTO correspondence since their whole point is to serve as identifiers) Also, you'd need to beef up the recordation provisions so that transfers and exclusive licenses had to be recorded for validity and had to be kept up to date. This implies the need for penalties for noncompliance, mind.
It only prohibits the Federal Government from abridging the freedom of speech. Local state authorites are not Congress. It only prohibits Congress.
Let me refer you to the 14th Amendment incorporation doctrine (and n.b. that state constitutions all AFAIK have guarantees that are the same or even stronger than this).
It seperates the Government from the Church, not the church from the Government.
No, it does both. If the government cannot engage in dealings of a religious capacity it can't take orders from a religion either. To do so would be to have one of those religions be officially on top, and then you're back doing what even you agree isn't permissible.
So, the church can influence the Federal Government quite a bit. And they can practicaly run State Governments if it is allowed in that state's constitution.
Let me remind you of the republican clause of the Constitution as well.
If you don't like that, move to a different state. That is the great thing about this country we live in.
No, the great thing about this country is that you can be so wrong that I wouldn't trust you if you said that the sun rises in the east, and yet we're secure enough, knowing that you'll always be marginalized as a nut, that we don't have to lock you away or shoot you or otherwise get our hands dirty in order to keep you from being dangerous to others. It's great.
If the distributor could wait for the copyright to expire before distributing, why would they ever have to pay performers/songwriters?
Two reasons: First, because the amount paid to artists is usually pretty minimal. Artists don't usually have a good bargaining position until they've gotten established. So if you have your A&R men bring in five promising bands, and one of them won't commit to a five album contract, you just don't bother doing business with them. They're unlikely to be so promising that making them happy is worth it, an you've got four other bands that are more cooperative. In the grand scheme of things, you usually have a number of larger expenses to deal with than this. So it's not a big deal to just pay them.
Second, because you, as the publisher, want there to be a copyright. That way you're the only one who is publishing these songs, and you don't have to compete in an open market for exact copies of the same thing. That is, you're not trying to make money as a supplier of a commodity -- yet. You'll make more money, if it's popular, so long as you're the exclusive source. It's therefore worth it to have to pay the artists whatever small amount they agreed to.
If you want to seperate the lyric and music copyright from the sound recording copyright,
They are seperate. Maybe they're held by the same person, but they're different works, and therefore get different copyrights. Just like how the copyright on a book is distinct from the copyright on the movie version of the book. And when the book copyright expires, it means that other people can make movies based upon it, but that doesn't give them the right to freely copy what was added in the movie, so long as it still is copyrighted.
In fact, the songwriter and composer get the copyright in the lyrics and music, and not the performer. The performer only gets royalties from the copyright in the sound recording.
Yes. Each artist only gets royalties -- if at all -- based on the work that he did. It would hardly be fair otherwise.
So, by shortening the copyright on the sound recording, you penalise the performers by shortening their revenue stream - it's not only the recording companies that get screwed.
They're not being shortened. They're just shorter mainly by virtue of a) being rather new (copyrights on recordings are not an old idea) and b) being treated shabbily by the whole Berne-personality-of-an-author crowd, who are schmucks anyway, let's face it.
Anyway, you've yet to make a point against short copyrights, particularly one that considers the public interest.
which would deny that author what I see as rightful income, as being unfair to the authors of those rare works
Well, whether Lucas gets a shitload of income from Star Wars for 20 years or for 95 years, he still ends up with a shitload of income. Is it that injust to have the earlier cutoff, if that cutoff would a) still be sufficient to get him to have created the movie, thus delivering more bang for the buck, and b) would yield a greater benefit to the public in that more works hit the public domain sooner? I don't see it as a problem, but then I believe copyright is meant to promote the progress of science, rather than to promote the bank account of one-in-a-million artists.
I think that a 3 year term would STILL be much too short.
I agree. I think five years for software, and maybe as many as five five-year terms (if renewed for them) for everything else. But three years isn't crazy insane. It just might not be ideal. I think we can all agree that so long as we're honestly looking for the point where the public benefit is greatest that we can disagree as to where it happens to be. Eventually we'll home in on it.
Copyright before then really only applied to written works and maps, whereas they now apply to nearly everything - photos, movies, even archecture
No.
Berne is from 1886. The first US federal copyright law (which isn't the first that applied here) dates back to 1790 and covered books and maps. The 1802 Act added prints and etchings. 1831 added musical compositions. 1856 added dramatic compositions. 1865 added photographs. 1870 added paintings, statues, etc.
Berne, incidentally, didn't add things like photos and movies until the 20th century. It lagged behind the US.
And architecture is a stupid thing to have copyrights for. Do you think that people won't design and build new buildings without copyrights? Do you think it's appropriate to give copyrights away without any public benefit that stems from them? I don't. I like to spend my copyright 'dollar' frugally and responsibly.
(It makes me wonder if speech is copyrighted... and if not, why not? justification for why everything written or recorded is copyrighted easily extends to speech).
Speech isn't written or recorded. It's just in the air. Since the Constitution only allows for copyrights in "writings" speech is never copyrightable. A recording of speech is copyrightable, but not the underlying speech itself. Speech that merely is a performance of a pre-written work isn't copyrightable, but the pre-written work is.
The US has taken some stabs at further undermining its own Constitutional law on this. We're all waiting to see how it turns out, but the situation is rare to begin with. In any event, even the assholes that support this idea can't claim that it falls under copyright.
US laws were totally different from world standards until 1976
I think you meant "better than world standards."
I take it that you don't personally know anyone who creates works for which copyright is important.
Well, I was a professional artist before I went into law, so I'd have to disagree with you there.
Unfortunately, it simply isn't economically feasible to go to court. An individual artist does not have the capital to pursue litigation against a large publishing company.
Well, that's a bit surprising. Copyright is quite favorable to plaintiffs. Artists can get their choice of statutory damages or actual damages and profits. And they can recover reasonable fees and costs. Given a good case, lawyers would not be averse to taking a case on contingency, so that they only need to be paid if the plaintiff wins, and their payment is a percentage of the award (usually a third).
Additionally, even if your argument there had merit, why mention it? It really has nothing to do with whether registrations are necessary to get a copyright or not.
In any case, if this is happening to your Mom, maybe she ought to find a copyright attorney so that she can protect herself.
Now can you imagine what it would be like if every single work had to be registered with a government office to get any legal protection whatsoever?
It would not be appreciably different. Presently, you can't bring a suit without registering, and unless you've registered prior to the infringement you can't get the statutory damages that make copyright suits so much fun for the plaintiff.
Plus, it's easy to imagine that world: we lived in it until 1978, and the world wasn't a seething mass of anarchy without automatic copyrights, was it?
At any rate, I don't think any government agency would have the capacity to handle the volume of registrations with anything approaching efficiency.
In 2004, the most recent year that the statistics are out for, the Copyright Office handled well over 600,000 registrations and had brought the time it takes to issue a registration certificate down to 80 days from when the claim is received. Of course, since the time is backdated to the date of receipt (so that authors aren't punished for inefficiencies of the CO) it isn't a big deal.
The cost for a registration is a paltry $30. If you don't expect that a copyright on a work is going to be worth that, costs and a decent profit, then maybe you should rethink being an artist that relies on copyrights. Some artists rely on copies -- an actual Picasso was worth far more than a duplicate. Small artists at shows generally sell little paintings, sculptures, etc. for which there is not much chance of piracy. The physical object is what's valuable. And other artists just get a day job waiting on tables or whatever. Art that isn't economically viable is fine, but copyright won't help. You would need grants.
D'oh! Here is that list of bestsellers.
Well, Paul died in 1966. I'm sure he's been rolling quite a lot since then. ;)