I think the way to solve both problems (creators keeping copyright and it not being abused for too long) is to make it last 50 years OR until the death of the creator of the work.
This way, creators who are still alive do not feel cheated like they do currently (after all, they made it), but the timeframe is not extended in all cases, so the work still enters public domain if the author has passed away and 50 years expired.
by Anonymous Coward
on Sunday November 26 2006, @08:33PM (#16996916)
Probably not a good idea to put a price on the head of an author when you consider that the music industry is already into mafia-like tactics like payola...
Probably not a good idea to put a price on the head of an author when you consider that the music industry is already into mafia-like tactics like payola...
Your logic is flawed. If the copyright vanishes if their artist dies, as the parent suggests, then it would be in the music industry's best interest to keep him alive for as long as possible.
I suspect that if this were to become the case, the music industry would become heavily invested in various life extension technologies.
"You can make a record in 1955 and have been getting royalties... been living on that and suddenly they're gone."
Maybe you could get of you're arse and do some work then? Just a suggestion...
I know that was tongue-in-cheek, but it's worth noting. You can always make the same arguement at any time, so it leads to totally unlimited copyright. What about the grand-children benefiting from the creations and hard work of their grand-parents?
To those artists who actually support this. Frankly, if you're an artist, and you want your heirs unto the fifth generation to have a special advantage over everyone else's equally remote descendants, you're a lunatic megalomaniac, with some kind of fixation about founding imperial dynasties, and it's about time your fans told you off. I'm still contributing to an anuity for my kid, hope you do something similar. I worked hard when she was growing up too - instead of complaining that she wouldn't continue to receive money if I died, I carried lots of life insurance. I carry less now that she's grown, educated and mostly independant. Shouldn't she benefit some more from that money I spent on life insurance earlier? And if not her, well she's gonna make me a grandfather someday (or so she says) - why can't I pass on some of the fruits of my old carreer to those cute little hypothetical grandkids?
"Ooohhh! Ooohhh! I want my highly evolved descendants living in the Omega Centauri region a million years from now to benefit from my hard work, won't someone please think of the 19 ft. tall, cylendrical, neutronium sheathed, stardrive-up-the-spine fitted trans-transhuman children?".
I know that was tongue-in-cheek, but it's worth noting. You can always make the same arguement at any time, so it leads to totally unlimited copyright. What about the grand-children benefiting from the creations and hard work of their grand-parents?
The thing is, if copyright is for the life of the author and that's it, then where is the incentive for people who don't have many years left to create copyrighted work?
If the purpose of copyright law is not to provide equity but rather to create an incentive f
If copyright lasts for so long, then where is the incentive for the author to actually create more works? If you can write a single book/song/whatever, and live off the royalties for the next 95 years, then where is your incentive to create more works? Copyright shouldn't give someone the ability to live their entire life off of something they created when they were 20. They should have to continue to work and produce new works if they want to make a living. Copyright should last 5-10 years from initial
Regardless, why do the adult children (and especially grand-children) of a musician, author, etc deserve to get money for work they had no part in creating? Let them create their own income-producing works, or earn a living some other way. My parents have told me that I shouldn't count on any special inheritance from them (they expect to spend most of what they've saved), and I'm perfectly content with that because I've done nothing to earn that money.
Providing for one's minor children and/or dependent spouse is a noble and admirable goal, which should be supported by keeping copyrights valid for some term after the creator's death if he has dependents... but not a term so long that every person who even knew the creator is dead before it expires.
Personally, since I have no dependents, I've decided to draft a will that specifies that upon my death, all intellectual property I own will be bequeathed to the public domain.
Providing for one's minor children and/or dependent spouse is a noble and admirable goal, which should be supported by keeping copyrights valid for some term after the creator's death if he has dependents... but not a term so long that every person who even knew the creator is dead before it expires.
I agree with this completely. I knew someone who took a year off work in order to research and write a book. He had enough put away to care for his family for the year, and his job was left open for him if t
Since you ask, I'm not particularly fond of the way children and grandchildren tend to inherit companies they had no part in building, either. I've seen several examples first-hand where the heirs either screwed it up or abused the fortune for personal gain; they didn't deserve it. Business inheritance serves to create a hereditary aristocracy that gives economic advantages and power to people based on who their parents were. Level playing fields and equal opportunity be damned. But I'm not actually radical enough to advocate the abolition of inheritance, so I won't press that point.
I don't believe that intellectual property should be as sacrosanct as real property. I think the framers of the U.S. Constitution (who definitely believed in real property and inheritance thereof) got it right: copyright exists for reasons that serve the public good, not for the private good.
No because by that time, the patent expired (MUCH faster than copyright) and there are 37 other companies producing widgets.
Why is music so much more special than any other creative work?
Copyright law does not exist to enrich artists. It exists to *encourage* them to create works. Are we experiencing a wave of artists refusing to create works because copyright law isn't strong enough? Are we not in fact experiencing a huge GLUT of entertainment which is only going to become larger over time?
No. Fifty years, period. That's all the TRIPS agreement (the WTO's requirement for national copyright laws) requires. If you haven't invested your fifty years of royalties, tough.
Now we have to push for "copyright harmonization" in the US to cut back US copyright to the TRIPS standards. It's time for the Copyright Term Reduction Act.
Fifty years and it's free. It's a law we can live with.
Fifty? How about 10? Better yet, five with a five year extension. Anything more than that is off the table for me. And while we're at it, make it a commercial copyright.
copyright should not apply to personal use, period. Can we have a law that has some relationship to its enforcability please? Here's a litle experiment for ya:
Go see your mother (you should anyway), have a look through her CD/DVD/sewing pattern collection (which she has depends on age of your mother), pick one you like and ask "can I have a copy of this?" I absolutely guarentee she will say "yes." If she doesn't, it's probably because you never visit her.
Now I ask you, if a law exists that everyone's Mom is willing to break, what the hell kind of society are we living in?
I disagree, but in any case, so? Copyright isn't meant to be fair. It's meant to get the greatest benefit for the public at the least cost to the public. If 10 year copyright is just as much of an incentive to artists in terms of them actually creating works as 100 year copyright is, then the former is the only acceptable choice. And often the difference can be just that stark, since the vast majority of copyrights are worthless, and of the tiny fraction that have any value ever, the vast majority of those
E.g. if you have a movie, most of your profit will come in the first few weeks that it is open in theaters, in the first few weeks it is on pay per view, in the first few weeks it is available for rental, etc. Very very little comes from the movie years down the road.
The Wizard of Oz probably makes the copyright holders more NOW than it did in the 1930s.
So do dead mechanics, dead teachers, dead garbagemen, etc. They don't get paid after death unless they invested their money. Neither should artists.
Of course, life is way too long as well. The original copyright was 12 years, and at that time reproduction and distribution was much slower than today. 3 years should be more than sufficient in this day and age.
Civilisation didn't actually start with the US constitution! The *original* copyright was actually 21 years, specified in the British Statute of Anne [copyrighthistory.com] in 1710, unless you count the licencing act of 1662, which granted rights that never expired.
While I'm in favour of much shorter copyright terms, I'm not sure your analogy works very well, since dead garbagemen don't clear up much rubbish, but dead musicians do sell a lot of records.
From the article: 'Music journalist Neil McCormack told BBC Radio Five Live it was a blow to the industry..."You can make a record in 1955 and have been getting royalties... been living on that and suddenly they're gone."'.
Well yep - honestly if you haven't done anything else in 50 years it probably should be gone too. In a not especially long amount of time, some Beatles stuff will be coming out of copyright. Now I'm no Beatles expert, but it seems to me that absolutely all of them went on to do more work elsewhere and didn't just sit back living off their early work. I see that statement as a good thing, not as a 'blow to the industry'.
Be interesting to compare and contrast with film - what's the UK limit on film copyrights?
The purpose of copyright is to encourage creation of new works. Anything more than 10 years (in my view) is actually counterproductive. Derivative works are stymied by the monopoly the original creator has. Sure, you can negotiate and pay big dollar to license a derivative work. But, for example, had Disney been the original creator of "Alice in Wonderland" you can bet that the video game "Alice" would never have been made.
Well yep - honestly if you haven't done anything else in 50 years it probably should be gone too.
On the one hand, I have to agree with this. On the other hand, I have to think that if someone makes a recording that can continue to sell for 50+ years, that person deserves some sort of financial reward for it.
On the third hand, when copyright expires, it doesn't mean the original creator loses all rights to sell the work. It just means he no longer has the exclusive right.
Much as I love Jethro Tull, I can't agree with Ian Anderson's position on this issue.
Here's his webpage on the matter:
Anderson Speaks Out on Recorded Copyright Law in the UK [j-tull.com]
in which Ian considers that copyright on his recordings should be like owning a house - the owner can obtain revenue from the house indefinitely.
I think "painting a house" is a better analogy. Performing/recording music is like painting a house, it requires a fixed amount of effort to complete. The painter doesn't receive ongoing royalties from people who enjoy looking at the house, nor does the owner of the house have to pay the painter every year for the previous paint job.
In fact Ian goes on to say "I would have better protection as the bricks-and-mortar builder of my house than a builder of recorded music.". Well, the house builder doesn't receive ongoing royalties either.
Ian complains that "This Was" will be out of copyright in 12 years. I note that "This Was" requires exactly zero ongoing effort from the band. The only effort required is in reproduction and distribution, for which the record label is, ahem, more than adequately compensated.
Ian closes his argument by appealing to our compassion: "Why should we perhaps have to see these musicians struggle in old age without heat
for their homes or the wherewithal to pay their nursing home bills while their American counterparts are taken care of for life by ongoing royalty income?". Of course being an appeal to emotion, it isn't a terribly rational argument. Why should old artists be treated any differently to old painters? We expect the painters to provide for their own old age by investments, superannuation or, failing that, the Government pension. Why should old artists be treated differently, that they should not care to provide for their future while they are still earning money from their performances or compositions?
On the one hand, I have to agree with this. On the other hand, I have to think that if someone makes a recording that can continue to sell for 50+ years, that person deserves some sort of financial reward for it.
On the third hand, when copyright expires, it doesn't mean the original creator loses all rights to sell the work. It just means he no longer has the exclusive right.
How about a system like this?
Traditional exclusive copyright - 15 years with an option to extend another 5 for a fee.
After the initial 15 years (or 20), the copyright goes to a Creative Commons license - Attribution, Share-Alike, Non-Commercial for a period of 50 years from when the work was originally created. So that would be 30 to 35 years under a CC license. This would allow others to create non-commercial derivative works based off the original, and the original creator would still have control over commercial uses of his/her work.
Then after 50 years from creation, the work enters into the public domain.
...Let's say that you put your savings into a bank in 1955. Should "society" have free rights to that money after 50 years? After all, you should have still have been working, right?
It should not have free access, regardless of whether I'd been working or not. But I'm not suggesting taking artists' money, they too will have their money in the bank from the savings account they opened in 1955, and I am not suggesting anyone gains free access to it. The artists keep their money, of course they do. What th
Copyright is government protection of a work, in exchange for the work becoming public domain.
This is the deal, and some artists and all the corporation want to change the deal after enjoying many, many, years of government protection.
That is why it is different then other property. They want indeffinate copyright? fine, but all litigation should be in a civil court, and all collection of evidence is left up to the corporation, no search warrents, nothing.
Quit frankly, anything more the 15 years(based on typical earning for a work) is stealing from the public domain.
Most copyrights (95%+) make nothing after 15 years, and keeping it away from the public longer for just a small minority it absurd.
If I start and then leave a profitable company... do I have to give up my stock after 50 years? Why not?
I'd say the company is a real entity, still actually producing. Your "intellectual property" is pretty imaginary.
I would say that if, after 50 years, the company itself should be losing some intellectual property -- if they are an R&D firm, they better be making new things if they want to be around after 50 years. If you're selling real, physical products, then by all means, continue. If you're sitting on some real estate, and you've found a way to make money off it, chances are you have to actually do some maintenance, so that seems fair. But if all you're doing is sitting on some patents, then the company should die in 5 years, not 50.
If I create sculptures that I charge people to see in my gallery, do I have to give them up after 50 years?
I'd say that after 50 years, people should be able to copy your sculpture, make derivative works, etc. You don't have to give them up.
I'm just uncomfortable with society appropriating my property when "it" feels I've had it long enough.
The thing is, you're still thinking of copyright as your property.
Copyright is actually a bit mis-named. It's a right to be the only one copying, not simply a right to copy. You can still sell them after 50 years, but others can make copies and sell those.
And I do feel that after 50 years, you should either be doing something else or you should be retired. Think of it as a tax -- after those 50 years, your work becomes available for others to improve on. Derivative works are a good thing. Public archives are a good thing.
It might help if you think of it less as your property and more as a lease from society. After all, society giveth the copyright, society has the right to taketh away. Yes, you put in the work to create the material, but society bears the burden of protecting this artificial right of yours -- laywers, courts, etc. Just somewhat better than, say, signing a deal with most record labels...
I'm just uncomfortable with society appropriating my property when "it" feels I've had it long enough.
It seems to me the idea (piece of music, recording, whatever) is not and cannot be property (at least not in the sense that physical objects or land can be property). The copyright itself - i.e., the limited-time monopoly created and enforced by the government - is the property. Let me emphasize that: the property here is created by the government. As an encouragement for artists and others to produce ideas, society rewards them by creating a kind of property and granting it to them. Society moreover provides resources for the enforcement of that property right. But the right is time limited: after a certain period, society no longer recognizes or enforces the right it previously granted.
Think of it like this. You write a song. You take that song to the government, and they give you a document stating that you have an exclusive right to copy and perform that song for the next N years. The song may not be property, but the document certainly is: its ownership is enforced by the law, you can sell it, and so forth. When those N years are up, you still have the document, but the rights in conferred have expired. Did anyone take anything away from you? On the contrary, they gave you something. Oh, and incidentally, you still have the song you wrote.
These days there's no document proving your rights; the grant is automatic. I don't know if there ever was such a document, although filing used to be required. The point is, copyright is a social construct, and the right is property. Ideas, on the other hand, are not.
Is this just a case of really poor journalism or is there some provision of UK copyright law that foreits the life of the author in the duration of copyright when they transfer the ownership of the work or something? Cause I'm looking at the UK copyright act here and it says life + 50 years, and apparently in '97 there was an EU-wide ammendment that made that life + 70 years. I thought this recent news story was about people complaining that they can't have life + 95 years and when their kids grow up they'll ask for life + 125 years, and so on. As for the people who "make their living" from collecting royalties on songs their dear old dad sang back in the 50's, cry me a freakin' river.
Music copyrights are messy, because there is a copyright on the song, and seperately on the performance and recording of the song (called 'mechanical copyright'). If my understanding is correct, Cliff Richard's early work will only be coming out of mechanical copyright. This means a prospective seller of these works would have to pay rights for the songs but not the recordings, in they same way they would if they made cover-versions of the songs.
I believe that our British copyright law was not backdated last itme it was extended, so works recorded before the life + 70 tariff do not get an extension. Oddly enough this was something Hollywood actually lobbied strongly for, as there were quite a lot or films in production that were based on 'just out of copyright' works that would have gone back into copyright (I think this was the case with character of Sherlock Holmes when the previous extension was backdated).
Brits here should check out the petition for private copying [pm.gov.uk] on 10 Downing Street's website. It's essentially asking that the government do what the think tank suggested.
Prime Minister's Aid: Tony Tony.... hundreds of thousands of people from the British public, you know, the people that actually voted you and your two-faced party into power in the first place are lining the streets telling you not to get involved in an unjust and poorly thought out war in Iraq... what should we do prime minister
Tony Blair: Fuck em, George says "Go Go Go!".... just give 'em all free Cliff Richards Music or something. That should shut them up!
If you listen really really carefully, you can hear a faint cheer from the 2 people that A) listen to Cliff Richard and Jethro Tull and B) have mastered P2P music sharing.
The write-up says that surveys say the UK public supports extending copyrights. But then he says in reference to the MPs refusing to extend copyrights: "Looks like the government is realizing that the public are the ones that vote 'em in or out."
The write-up says that surveys say the UK public supports extending copyrights. But then he says in reference to the MPs refusing to extend copyrights: "Looks like the government is realizing that the public are the ones that vote 'em in or out."...so which is it?
The survey in question is a beautiful piece of work, which never actually asked the question "how long do you think copyright should be?". Instead, the question offered was "Do you think UK artists should be afforded the same protection as US artists?". To which my answer would be "yes, but..." meaning that US copyright should be reduced to 50 years, not UK extended to 95.
It was a recording industry survey that came up with the 'UK public supports extending copyright' statistic. I imagine it was worded along the lines of, 'should copyright be extended beyond 50 years or should pre-school children be forced to work down mines?
The pro-copyright crowd loves to scream "theft" when the crime is technically copyright infringement and even though a person has a new copy, the original copy owner hasn't lost possession of his copy.
But here I think "theft" is the right term.
These works were published and purchased under the terms of copyright at the time - that after a specified number of years ownership would transfer to the public domain - we would all own it.
When copyrights are unilaterally extended, as has been the case many times recently, the public is deprived of the ownership that they were promised under the original agreement. In this case, we have something that is tangibly missing - public ownership of the work and I think that fits the definition of theft far better than making copies does.
This applies only to music recordings, not to copyrights in general. For other works (such as the musical compositions and lyrics themselves), the rule in the UK is that copyrights last for the life of the creator plus 70 years. Although the recordings of the Beatles' early recordings may become PD in the UK in 2013, even if Paul were to choke on a stalk of brocolli tomorrow morning, all those Lennon-McCartney compositions would still be copyrighted until 2077, and until then you wouldn't be able to make copies of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" without paying composition royalties to... well... Michael Jackson, I guess.
The fact that this was an online poll means that it's not scientific, the results totally depend on what sites they put the question on and what sorts of people decided to respond.
Also the way the question was phrased:
should [UK recording artists] be protected for the same number of years as their American counterparts?
is a blatantly biased way of asking the question. Sounds like they wanted to drum up some phony polls to present to parliament, and it sounds like they're not buying it.
That was a direct quote from Lars Ulrich from when Tull got the Grammy everyone thought Metallica would get, dude. There's some kind of weird poetic justice here.
If you can't make money from it then it shouldn't be under copyright. That's the purpose of copyright, to give people a monetary incentive to create new works.
Various studies have shown that a book or film usually makes over 90% of its overally money within a year of release. Music is a bit less likely to drop off that sharply, but it's not much better, and new technology, such as re-releasing LPs as CDs, may have caused much of the extension we see in the curve there. Even there, most of the money is made in the firt year, and the 90% margin is usually reached within 3 years.
One estimate I've seen is that going from the U.S.'s current Life+70 copyright to completely unlimited will have no effect at all on over 98% of author's estates, and the remaining small percentage will see a modest average 3% average additional income. An author who banks a modest 5% of his income for posterity at the time he or she makes it can take advantage of compound interest and much less inflated money to easly beat everything copyright extensions are likely to do for his kids and grand kids by a factor of at least two orders of magnetude. Statistically, only about three artists from the 20th century are likely to see significant potential profits more than 70 years from their deaths. Since we already have J.R.R. Tolkien, Steven King, and George Lucas, what's with those musicians, film-makers and writers who seem convinced they are also one of that tiny elite fraction? At best, a lot more of them are deluded than right. For them, a clue - just because you are a better artist than these guys, doesn't mean your work will be more commercial than theirs 70 years after your death - in fact it practically precludes it.
The price authors, musicians, and others pay for that slight chance of bettering their great-great-grand children's lives by a bit? "Life plus" can't be treated as the transfer of a natural right to copy, as no one has a natural right to copy after they die. So now, copyright isn't based on one of those "inallienable rights" that come from "Nature and Nature's God", as the US founding fathers so quaintly put it - instead, it's a right the government manufactures from nothing by politically divine fiat. Ergo, the government can now take away what they have created, with no legal principles to require any checks or balances. If copyright is later shortened, the government has already laid all the necessary groundwork for the claim the additional time (and control over publication) reverts to the government, and not to the people.
The paperwork needn't be complex or costly, but it is important that it exists so that we can limit copyright to only those works where the creator bothered to ask for one.
Like it or not, that idea's dead in the water. While registration used to be required in certain minor jurisdisctions (e.g. the U.S.) the terms of the Berne Convention require that "formalities" of this sort be abolished. The U.S. dropped them in '78.
Suggestion: Until Death of Creator (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Suggestion: Until Death of Creator (Score:5, Insightful)
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Probably not a good idea to put a price on the head of an author when you consider that the music industry is already into mafia-like tactics like payola...
Your logic is flawed. If the copyright vanishes if their artist dies, as the parent suggests, then it would be in the music industry's best interest to keep him alive for as long as possible.
I suspect that if this were to become the case, the music industry would become heavily invested in various life extension technologies.
Re:Suggestion: Until Death of Creator (Score:5, Funny)
"He's not dead he's just sleeping!"
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Re:Suggestion: Until Death of Creator (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Suggestion: Until Death of Creator (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Suggestion: Until Death of Creator (Score:5, Interesting)
To those artists who actually support this. Frankly, if you're an artist, and you want your heirs unto the fifth generation to have a special advantage over everyone else's equally remote descendants, you're a lunatic megalomaniac, with some kind of fixation about founding imperial dynasties, and it's about time your fans told you off. I'm still contributing to an anuity for my kid, hope you do something similar. I worked hard when she was growing up too - instead of complaining that she wouldn't continue to receive money if I died, I carried lots of life insurance. I carry less now that she's grown, educated and mostly independant. Shouldn't she benefit some more from that money I spent on life insurance earlier? And if not her, well she's gonna make me a grandfather someday (or so she says) - why can't I pass on some of the fruits of my old carreer to those cute little hypothetical grandkids?
"Ooohhh! Ooohhh! I want my highly evolved descendants living in the Omega Centauri region a million years from now to benefit from my hard work, won't someone please think of the 19 ft. tall, cylendrical, neutronium sheathed, stardrive-up-the-spine fitted trans-transhuman children?".
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The thing is, if copyright is for the life of the author and that's it, then where is the incentive for people who don't have many years left to create copyrighted work?
If the purpose of copyright law is not to provide equity but rather to create an incentive f
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Re:Suggestion: Until Death of Creator (Score:5, Interesting)
Regardless, why do the adult children (and especially grand-children) of a musician, author, etc deserve to get money for work they had no part in creating? Let them create their own income-producing works, or earn a living some other way. My parents have told me that I shouldn't count on any special inheritance from them (they expect to spend most of what they've saved), and I'm perfectly content with that because I've done nothing to earn that money.
Providing for one's minor children and/or dependent spouse is a noble and admirable goal, which should be supported by keeping copyrights valid for some term after the creator's death if he has dependents... but not a term so long that every person who even knew the creator is dead before it expires.
Personally, since I have no dependents, I've decided to draft a will that specifies that upon my death, all intellectual property I own will be bequeathed to the public domain.
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Providing for one's minor children and/or dependent spouse is a noble and admirable goal, which should be supported by keeping copyrights valid for some term after the creator's death if he has dependents... but not a term so long that every person who even knew the creator is dead before it expires.
I agree with this completely. I knew someone who took a year off work in order to research and write a book. He had enough put away to care for his family for the year, and his job was left open for him if t
Re:Suggestion: Until Death of Creator (Score:4, Insightful)
Since you ask, I'm not particularly fond of the way children and grandchildren tend to inherit companies they had no part in building, either. I've seen several examples first-hand where the heirs either screwed it up or abused the fortune for personal gain; they didn't deserve it. Business inheritance serves to create a hereditary aristocracy that gives economic advantages and power to people based on who their parents were. Level playing fields and equal opportunity be damned. But I'm not actually radical enough to advocate the abolition of inheritance, so I won't press that point.
I don't believe that intellectual property should be as sacrosanct as real property. I think the framers of the U.S. Constitution (who definitely believed in real property and inheritance thereof) got it right: copyright exists for reasons that serve the public good, not for the private good.
Parent
Re:Suggestion: Until Death of Creator (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is music so much more special than any other creative work?
Copyright law does not exist to enrich artists. It exists to *encourage* them to create works. Are we experiencing a wave of artists refusing to create works because copyright law isn't strong enough? Are we not in fact experiencing a huge GLUT of entertainment which is only going to become larger over time?
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Re:Suggestion: Until Death of Creator (Score:4, Interesting)
wishful thinking,
Sir Cliff manages to release something around this time, every year - unfortunately
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Re:Suggestion: Until Death of Creator (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Fifty years, period. That's all the TRIPS agreement (the WTO's requirement for national copyright laws) requires. If you haven't invested your fifty years of royalties, tough.
Now we have to push for "copyright harmonization" in the US to cut back US copyright to the TRIPS standards. It's time for the Copyright Term Reduction Act.
Fifty years and it's free. It's a law we can live with.
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Yah for commercial-only copyright (Score:5, Insightful)
Go see your mother (you should anyway), have a look through her CD/DVD/sewing pattern collection (which she has depends on age of your mother), pick one you like and ask "can I have a copy of this?" I absolutely guarentee she will say "yes." If she doesn't, it's probably because you never visit her.
Now I ask you, if a law exists that everyone's Mom is willing to break, what the hell kind of society are we living in?
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Re:Suggestion: Until Death of Creator (Score:4, Insightful)
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The Wizard of Oz probably makes the copyright holders more NOW than it did in the 1930s.
Re:Suggestion: Until Death of Creator (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, life is way too long as well. The original copyright was 12 years, and at that time reproduction and distribution was much slower than today. 3 years should be more than sufficient in this day and age.
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Re:Suggestion: Until Death of Creator (Score:5, Informative)
While I'm in favour of much shorter copyright terms, I'm not sure your analogy works very well, since dead garbagemen don't clear up much rubbish, but dead musicians do sell a lot of records.
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Living off 1955... (Score:5, Insightful)
'Music journalist Neil McCormack told BBC Radio Five Live it was a blow to the industry..."You can make a record in 1955 and have been getting royalties... been living on that and suddenly they're gone."'.
Well yep - honestly if you haven't done anything else in 50 years it probably should be gone too. In a not especially long amount of time, some Beatles stuff will be coming out of copyright. Now I'm no Beatles expert, but it seems to me that absolutely all of them went on to do more work elsewhere and didn't just sit back living off their early work. I see that statement as a good thing, not as a 'blow to the industry'.
Be interesting to compare and contrast with film - what's the UK limit on film copyrights?
Cheers,
Ian
Exactly (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
On the one hand, I have to agree with this. On the other hand, I have to think that if someone makes a recording that can continue to sell for 50+ years, that person deserves some sort of financial reward for it.
On the third hand, when copyright expires, it doesn't mean the original creator loses all rights to sell the work. It just means he no longer has the exclusive right.
Re:Living off 1955... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Living off 1955... (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's his webpage on the matter: Anderson Speaks Out on Recorded Copyright Law in the UK [j-tull.com] in which Ian considers that copyright on his recordings should be like owning a house - the owner can obtain revenue from the house indefinitely.
I think "painting a house" is a better analogy. Performing/recording music is like painting a house, it requires a fixed amount of effort to complete. The painter doesn't receive ongoing royalties from people who enjoy looking at the house, nor does the owner of the house have to pay the painter every year for the previous paint job.
In fact Ian goes on to say "I would have better protection as the bricks-and-mortar builder of my house than a builder of recorded music.". Well, the house builder doesn't receive ongoing royalties either.
Ian complains that "This Was" will be out of copyright in 12 years. I note that "This Was" requires exactly zero ongoing effort from the band. The only effort required is in reproduction and distribution, for which the record label is, ahem, more than adequately compensated.
Ian closes his argument by appealing to our compassion: "Why should we perhaps have to see these musicians struggle in old age without heat for their homes or the wherewithal to pay their nursing home bills while their American counterparts are taken care of for life by ongoing royalty income?". Of course being an appeal to emotion, it isn't a terribly rational argument. Why should old artists be treated any differently to old painters? We expect the painters to provide for their own old age by investments, superannuation or, failing that, the Government pension. Why should old artists be treated differently, that they should not care to provide for their future while they are still earning money from their performances or compositions?
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Re:Living off 1955... (Score:5, Interesting)
How about a system like this?
Traditional exclusive copyright - 15 years with an option to extend another 5 for a fee.
After the initial 15 years (or 20), the copyright goes to a Creative Commons license - Attribution, Share-Alike, Non-Commercial for a period of 50 years from when the work was originally created. So that would be 30 to 35 years under a CC license. This would allow others to create non-commercial derivative works based off the original, and the original creator would still have control over commercial uses of his/her work.
Then after 50 years from creation, the work enters into the public domain.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It should not have free access, regardless of whether I'd been working or not. But I'm not suggesting taking artists' money, they too will have their money in the bank from the savings account they opened in 1955, and I am not suggesting anyone gains free access to it. The artists keep their money, of course they do. What th
Re:Living off 1955... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the deal, and some artists and all the corporation want to change the deal after enjoying many, many, years of government protection.
That is why it is different then other property. They want indeffinate copyright? fine, but all litigation should be in a civil court, and all collection of evidence is left up to the corporation, no search warrents, nothing.
Quit frankly, anything more the 15 years(based on typical earning for a work) is stealing from the public domain.
Most copyrights (95%+) make nothing after 15 years, and keeping it away from the public longer for just a small minority it absurd.
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Re:Living off 1955... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say the company is a real entity, still actually producing. Your "intellectual property" is pretty imaginary.
I would say that if, after 50 years, the company itself should be losing some intellectual property -- if they are an R&D firm, they better be making new things if they want to be around after 50 years. If you're selling real, physical products, then by all means, continue. If you're sitting on some real estate, and you've found a way to make money off it, chances are you have to actually do some maintenance, so that seems fair. But if all you're doing is sitting on some patents, then the company should die in 5 years, not 50.
I'd say that after 50 years, people should be able to copy your sculpture, make derivative works, etc. You don't have to give them up.
The thing is, you're still thinking of copyright as your property.
Copyright is actually a bit mis-named. It's a right to be the only one copying, not simply a right to copy. You can still sell them after 50 years, but others can make copies and sell those.
And I do feel that after 50 years, you should either be doing something else or you should be retired. Think of it as a tax -- after those 50 years, your work becomes available for others to improve on. Derivative works are a good thing. Public archives are a good thing.
It might help if you think of it less as your property and more as a lease from society. After all, society giveth the copyright, society has the right to taketh away. Yes, you put in the work to create the material, but society bears the burden of protecting this artificial right of yours -- laywers, courts, etc. Just somewhat better than, say, signing a deal with most record labels...
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The *copyright* is the property, not the idea (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to me the idea (piece of music, recording, whatever) is not and cannot be property (at least not in the sense that physical objects or land can be property). The copyright itself - i.e., the limited-time monopoly created and enforced by the government - is the property. Let me emphasize that: the property here is created by the government. As an encouragement for artists and others to produce ideas, society rewards them by creating a kind of property and granting it to them. Society moreover provides resources for the enforcement of that property right. But the right is time limited: after a certain period, society no longer recognizes or enforces the right it previously granted.
Think of it like this. You write a song. You take that song to the government, and they give you a document stating that you have an exclusive right to copy and perform that song for the next N years. The song may not be property, but the document certainly is: its ownership is enforced by the law, you can sell it, and so forth. When those N years are up, you still have the document, but the rights in conferred have expired. Did anyone take anything away from you? On the contrary, they gave you something. Oh, and incidentally, you still have the song you wrote.
These days there's no document proving your rights; the grant is automatic. I don't know if there ever was such a document, although filing used to be required. The point is, copyright is a social construct, and the right is property. Ideas, on the other hand, are not.
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Errr, life + 50 years no? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Errr, life + 50 years no? (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe that our British copyright law was not backdated last itme it was extended, so works recorded before the life + 70 tariff do not get an extension. Oddly enough this was something Hollywood actually lobbied strongly for, as there were quite a lot or films in production that were based on 'just out of copyright' works that would have gone back into copyright (I think this was the case with character of Sherlock Holmes when the previous extension was backdated).
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On that note... (Score:5, Interesting)
Brits here should check out the petition for private copying [pm.gov.uk] on 10 Downing Street's website. It's essentially asking that the government do what the think tank suggested.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Tony Blair: Fuck em, George says "Go Go Go!".... just give 'em all free Cliff Richards Music or something. That should shut them up!
Hark.. (Score:5, Funny)
So, which is it? (Score:4, Interesting)
So, which is it?
Re:So, which is it? (Score:4, Interesting)
The survey in question is a beautiful piece of work, which never actually asked the question "how long do you think copyright should be?". Instead, the question offered was "Do you think UK artists should be afforded the same protection as US artists?". To which my answer would be "yes, but..." meaning that US copyright should be reduced to 50 years, not UK extended to 95.
Cheers,
Ian
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Re:So, which is it? (Score:4, Funny)
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Oh save us, Cliff Richards, the people's poet! (Score:3, Funny)
Copyright Extensions are Theft (Score:5, Insightful)
But here I think "theft" is the right term.
These works were published and purchased under the terms of copyright at the time - that after a specified number of years ownership would transfer to the public domain - we would all own it.
When copyrights are unilaterally extended, as has been the case many times recently, the public is deprived of the ownership that they were promised under the original agreement. In this case, we have something that is tangibly missing - public ownership of the work and I think that fits the definition of theft far better than making copies does.
Re:Copyright Extensions are Theft (Score:5, Insightful)
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This does not apply to UK copyrights in general (Score:5, Informative)
Push polling... (Score:4, Insightful)
Also the way the question was phrased:
Re:WhoTF? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Probably being naive here. (Score:4, Insightful)
One estimate I've seen is that going from the U.S.'s current Life+70 copyright to completely unlimited will have no effect at all on over 98% of author's estates, and the remaining small percentage will see a modest average 3% average additional income. An author who banks a modest 5% of his income for posterity at the time he or she makes it can take advantage of compound interest and much less inflated money to easly beat everything copyright extensions are likely to do for his kids and grand kids by a factor of at least two orders of magnetude. Statistically, only about three artists from the 20th century are likely to see significant potential profits more than 70 years from their deaths. Since we already have J.R.R. Tolkien, Steven King, and George Lucas, what's with those musicians, film-makers and writers who seem convinced they are also one of that tiny elite fraction? At best, a lot more of them are deluded than right. For them, a clue - just because you are a better artist than these guys, doesn't mean your work will be more commercial than theirs 70 years after your death - in fact it practically precludes it.
The price authors, musicians, and others pay for that slight chance of bettering their great-great-grand children's lives by a bit? "Life plus" can't be treated as the transfer of a natural right to copy, as no one has a natural right to copy after they die. So now, copyright isn't based on one of those "inallienable rights" that come from "Nature and Nature's God", as the US founding fathers so quaintly put it - instead, it's a right the government manufactures from nothing by politically divine fiat. Ergo, the government can now take away what they have created, with no legal principles to require any checks or balances. If copyright is later shortened, the government has already laid all the necessary groundwork for the claim the additional time (and control over publication) reverts to the government, and not to the people.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)