Dead Musicians Signing Media Rights Petitions

epeus writes "Following from the Gowers coverage and the Musicians' ad in the FT, Larry Lessig admits he was wrong about term extension: 'If you read the list, you'll see that at least some of these artists are apparently dead (e.g. Lonnie Donegan, died 4th November 2002; Freddie Garrity, died 20th May 2006). I take it the ability of these dead authors to sign a petition asking for their copyright terms to be extended can only mean that even after death, term extension continues to inspire. I'm not yet sure how. But I guess I should be a good sport about it, and just confess I was wrong. For if artists can sign petitions after they've died, then why can't they produce new recordings fifty year ago?'"

Obligatory Simpsons Quote

Oh no! The dead have risen and they're voting for copyright extension

Re:Obligatory Simpsons Quote

Thankfully many of us have spent dozens of hours practising zombie destruction in computer games like dead rising and are well-versed in their destruction. I'll go after zombie Elvis if someone else wants to get zombie Freddy Mercury.

Re:Obligatory Simpsons Quote

Then go after zombie Michael Jackson. He even claims to be still alive.

Re:Obligatory Simpsons Quote

No way. I don't want that zombie AIDS shit getting on me...

Hey man, you get bit and you're screwed anyway, whats it matter? Is there a lot of stigma in the zombie community about zombies with AIDs or something?

Re:Obligatory Simpsons Quote

Oh no! The dead have risen and they're voting for copyright extension

What's wrong with that? After all, they got many advantages from the copyright system. I'd call'em the grateful dead.
*ducks*

they should have a whip round

i wonder what the net worth of these 4500 "artists" are ?

then compare it with the net worth of 4500 Wallmart shop employees or 4500 Ford car plant workers who wont be getting paid either for work they did 50 years ago

perhaps the music industry needs a close audit to see where those 4500 poor, poor starving musicians are going wrong
if you have nothing to hide as they say...

Re:they should have a whip round

...getting paid for work you did a long time ago.

More precisely, that is collecting on deferred benefits they contracted for in return for their work long ago. It is a straight forward exchange of benefits for work.

In the case of extending copyrights, the beneficiaries are trying to get something for nothing.

Re:they should have a whip round

One would hope that the record companies and "musicians" favor extending copyright because their recordings are still selling and making money

If they want to make more money, they can get their asses back into the recording studio. That's what copyright is for.

Re:they should have a whip round

...extending copyright because their recordings are still selling and making money

These entities are free to sell and make money from these recordings in perpetuity without copyright extensions. They just won't be able to demand as much after the government enforced monopoly expires.

Re:they should have a whip round

Right, but they knew the copyright terms when they chose to do the work, now they're trying to change them after entering into the bargain with society. It's more like a long-retired worker deciding that his pension just isn't enough and trying to rewrite his contract.

The reason it works with copyright is because those who sell the recordings stand to gain an enormous amount while those they're bargaining with (i.e., all the citizens) each loses a comparatively small amount. The net effect is still bad for society overall (imo) but it's harder to get someone excited about defending society as a whole.

Re:they should have a whip round

No, you don't understand. In the case of the factory workers, they deserve their pensions because it was part of the agreed-upon compensation at the time of hire. It's just a matter of enforcing a preexisting agreement.

In contrast, these musicians want to retroactively change the agreement, even though they were aware of the terms and willingly agreed to them (by publishing the music) before.

In other words, the first group wants what is owed to them while the second group wants what is not owed to them. It is entirely a matter of petty greed!

not just that...

I take it the ability of these dead authors to sign a petition asking for their copyright terms to be extended can only mean that even after death, term extension continues to inspire.

I don't see why Lessig is so surprised. Not only can the dead sign petitions, but they can vote, too. America has lead the way in the legal frontier of corpse-rights and suffrage, at least as far back as the 1800s.

Remember, this is not just about the Royalties...

They're using every means possible to ensure their copyright gets extended. If copyright is not extended it will have a huge negative effect on the record companies / British Phonographic Industry (BPI), RIAA groups and content distributors, beyond that of royalties paid.

Content in the public domain waters down the argument for requiring ALL content to be 'protected'. If half of the worlds music was public domain, lobbyists would have a hard time persuading lawmakers to put restrictions on ALL devices. This has been evident with the RIAA continuously argue why DRM is required for ALL music to prevent copyright infringement. These arguments usually fail to recognize the existence of non-copyrighted music (Creative Commons, Public Domain etc), and certainly make no provision for it in their argument or 'industry drafted bills' (e.g DMCA). This results in systems like the Zune wi-fi sharing system which applies DRM when transferring songs, whether the media requires protection or not, and with total disregard for other licences such as 'copyleft' which may expressly forbid it.

We've seen from the Napster and Gokster cases in the 'war on file sharing' argued that "file sharing is always infringement of somebody's copyright", and fails to recognize the legal uses of file sharing systems. Again, if half of the worlds music was public domain, the argument agaisnt services like Bit-torrent is significantly watered down. Services like Youtube and Google Video have already been targeted, and we've seen media companies desire to shutdown the service altogether. Although Youtube and Google video are exceptional in that they've been careful to prevent copyright infringement from the start, and the result has been for the media companies attempts to re-define infringement. (i.e teenagers lip-sinking etc). Again their aim is to prove the majority of content that is free is infringing copyright and the services providing it should be shut-down.

We are seeing the music industry / BPI "pulling out all the stops" to prevent an extension of copyright. They're using artists that have done very very well out of record company who may 'win the hearts and minds of the people' (Cliff Richard), and now their padding their 'stats' with dead people. It is certain they are lobbying politicians as fast as they can.

The BPI (and RIAA) have responsibilities "in the collection, administration and distribution of music licenses and royalties" which relies on a vast library of content being under their control. Music that is currently in their control placed in the public domain erodes their breadth of responsibility and will ultimately affect their cut of the royalties.

This argument is not about the artists getting more money, it is about the BPI and RIAA retaining their value and ability to "fight the crime of music theft".

They cannot fight the "crime" if half the time it is perfectly legal to copy and share.

Re:Remember, this is not just about the Royalties.

The material does not even have to be in the public domain for it to "water down" the argument for all content to be protected. Works released under licences such as Creative Commons, which allow (sometimes with restrictions) copying and sharing while still retaining copyright, also water down the argument. In fact they add something new to 'pot'. If DRM is mandated (such that players will only play DRM protected content) then the DRM 'system' will have to handle the situation where the rights owner does allow copying, sampling etc. This would, of course, include putting no restrictions on content which is in the public domain either because the copyright has expired or it has been deliberately placed in the public domain.

Boycott Cliff this Christmas

Cliff Richard is the face of the multi-national companies who want to destroy fair use, remixing, amateur music and anything they cannot control. Therefore lets boycott Cliff this Christmas, refuse to listen to his crappy contrived whining. The last thing we want to do is to "incentivise" Cliff Richard to produce new songs.

Re:Boycott Cliff this Christmas

Think Ned Flanders with a guitar.

I don't see what the big deal is here.

Of course, I'm from Chicago. The dead regularly climb out of the ground to vote up here...must be something in the water...

makes me wonder..

Makes me wonder how 2pac or Biggie would feel about this. I guess we'll find out on their next albums!

Reminds me of a Monty Python song

... called "Decomposing Composers".

Although in this case I think they're recomposing composers.

2Pac doesn't need to do this

Instead of signing petitions, why don't they just release a couple new albums like 2Pac? It's totally paying for the henny and the hos in the afterlife.

Whenever you hear "corporation" or "association"

Remember that corporations meet almost every criteria for being psychopaths [wikipedia.org] that doesn't involve age or sexuality (Jokes about getting raped at the pump notwithstanding).

Pathological lying, conning/manipulative, shameless, parasitic lifestyle, irresponsibility? I consider it extremely unlikely that they wouldn't know that a member was dead (seeing as he wouldn't be showing up for recording and all), and even then, so what? If the signatures were genuine, no dead person's name could possibly be on the list. Yet another in the media industry's endless stream of manipulative lies. Naturally, when called out, they will shamelessly deny any previous knowledge. Parasitic lifestyle? We hear every day how the Internet makes the recording industry obsolete. Irresponsible? Like forging dead people's signatures?

Corporations are psychopaths. But they aren't psychopathic because they enjoy being evil - If they don't act like this, the shareholders can sue (If you don't [obviously wrong action], it's bad for profit = lawsuit). If this nonsense is to stop while it's still possible to get corporations back under control, the law needs to change. Seeing as it's 4am, I leave it to the rest of you to propose the changes.

anger

I wonder if the general public will be outraged enough by this to do something about it. Its obvious to everyone here that the labels are evil, but I wonder if the public at large understands it as well, and if not, if obvious lies and manipulation are sufficient to show it to them. Of course, you would think the Sony root kit would have done the same thing, and it doesn't seem to have made a real difference.

Advertising Standard Authority

If this is an Advert in the UK Edition of the FT, then the appropriate action to take would be to complain to the Advertising Standards Authority. ASA rulings are usually considered newsworthy in a minor way, and would raise awareness of the issue.

Re:Advertising Standard Authority

I made a complaint, if some other British people could then it might help them notice, you can complain online. The article was Thursday, 7th December. Here is the online complaint form:

http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/how_to_complain/complain ts_form/ [asa.org.uk]

If anyone knows the page number, or better, even has a copy of the ad then that would be really god.

Welcome to the new world of .....

...Cyber space virtual reality where you never really die and someone else really does own all your base.

Intellectual property rights are man created and man enforced where they can reasonably be enforced.

However, the value of the intellectual property only goes as far as the ability to share it, via licensing or some other method of "regulation" of the value exchange flow.

You can have all the intellectual property in the world but to yourself it is value less, it is only upon sharing it that it becomes valuable or has value.

With this in mind the apex of debate is regarding at what time does the IP rights constraints become to constraining to others on the path to human advancement that it falsely limits human advancement even effecting the author/inventor life and living environment?

Maybe some see creative works of non-invention as something that doesn't apply to this but the fact is that such creative works being constrained of the past would have, for example, nearly eliminated all science fiction of today. Today all science fiction contains enough elements of works previously done that it would be virtuallyt impossible to write a decent story. The same applies to alot of music.

Intellectual property right are intended to benefit the creator of it, but not to give them a permanet monopoly on it.

As a human character, right and duty, we build upon and with the works of those before us. If we did not then we could not evolved our environment, society, technology, medicine, shelter, transportation etc.. We'd still be living in caves and hunting for food.

Now what if technology could reach the rate of advancement that itself would provide solutions fast enough that we could live much longer, healthier, etc. And this would certainly effect any living "creator"

This cannot happen with IP rights constraining such forward movement!

They just signed on the wrong line

It wasn't their copyright term they were trying to extend...

Reg Shoe would be proud.

Go Dead!

I wonder...

...if the dead musicians also signed the petition to decrease their royalties [tuaw.com]?

I like Lebanon's hezbollah petitions better

Dead people do NOT sign these petitions ... but they do have a strong tendency to die AFTER it was asked of them

Copyrights should not be permanently transferrable

One of the biggest problems with the recording industry is that the artists sign over their copyright holdings permanently instead of leasing them. Right now the transfer of copyright is complete and permanent.

The lease should end when the contract does. The artist or artists would then have the option to renew their contract and lease, sign a new contract / release indie, or release it into the public domain.

With a lease, you can be assured that there isn't an abuse of the power that record labels have now. A simple law could make these current types of contracts obsolete and illegal. Artists should also be able to reference this law and get their copyrights returned to the rightful owner.

This kind of thing is being done with the LOTR Trilogy and The Hobbit. The movie rights were leased to Miramax for a short period. If they do not finish the movies within that timeframe, they cannot release them.

Lets face it, record labels themselves are an obsolete business model. There are many ways to do self promotion now and you don't need to include a 3rd party publisher. A simple website, some iTunes tracks and a live tour are you really need to promote yourself. All labels really do is publish little plastic discs. They don't need exclusive rights to your material to do that.

Are we sure it's a problem?

Err, I'm only in my second year of law school, so everyone should take this with a grain of salt. However, if the trustee of his estate is empowered with the right to endorse certain things on his behalf, my half informed judgment is that this isn't a problem. The endorsements you make are probably an asset that can be allocated to trustees upon certain executory conditions, the least problematic of which is endorsing an organization that legally represents your interests as an artist.

Larry Lessig doesn't get it...

... this petition was initiated years ago. It read:

    It may be possible in the future that it will be necessary to extend copyright. If you sign now we will take care to pass over your signature when this condition arises.

Indeed this petition was originally written in ancient egypt about threethousand years ago. And I am the only beneficiary. Take my word for it.

Anonymous Coward

I see dead people

... and they're signing petitions

Who benefits?

Do they really want us to believe that today's musicians will record more music if they get 95 years of copyright? Is there a musician (who doesn't write his own songs -- compositions get life ) for whom the deciding factor on recording a song is the infinitesimal chance that her song will be commercially viable after 50 years?

The risk that a musician is so dispirited by only getting 50 years of copyright on the recordings of her work is wholly theoretical. No one can point to such a musician. That musician, btw, isn't tomorrow's artist -- it's all recording artists since the term of phonogram monopoly was set at 50 years. Every song recorded for for the 20th century was produced with that incentive (or less).

However, there are two very real, non-theoretical groups of musicians for whom the existing term of 50 years is too long:

* Samplers and remixers. This is a non-theoretical, concrete and visible group of working musicians. They are unable to incorporate other works from culture into theirs without paying -- and not just paying, either. It's nearly impossible for an artist outside of the label system to clear samples from the labels' catalogues. That's because the labels give preferential treatement to one another in a mutually assured destruction dynamic (if EMI doesn't license its samples to Sony, then Sony can refuse to license to EMI). The effect of this for samplers and remixers in the UK is that they have to either:

1. Be criminals

2. Not make art

3. Sign up for the deal the labels offer, assign copyright in their works to the labels, and take the crummy "recoup"-based payment scheme the labels offer.

Talk about creating a buyer's market for what musicians have to sell!

* The other group of musicians harmed by the overlong term is those whose work is forgotten -- orphaned by society. In these cases, either the label still holds the copyright but won't reissue the musician's work (Universal's Decca warehouse in London holds the entire, unreleased catalogue of roots music, back to steel cylinders, and Universal hasn't even catalogued that collection, let alone made plans to re-release it); or no one knows who hold the copyright, because the deal was done so long ago.

At a recent Future of Music conference, Alanis Morrisette's attorney said that in his research, over 80% of all music recorded is not in the stream of commerce. In Eldred v Ashcroft, the US Supreme Court fount that *ninety eight percent* of all copyrighted works are "orphans".

For these musicians, alive or dead, there is a fate worse than penury: obscurity. Their works -- the art they cherished and midwifed -- have been eliminated from the historical record. We have piled their recordings up in a huge bonfire and burned them in slow motion.

Finally, there's another non-hypothetical, real, visible group of artists for whom term extension is directly harmful: composers.

People who write songs get a much longer term of copyright than those who perform them. When Elvis goes into the public domain and his records are re-issued, the black songwriters whose work he performed *still* get paid by the reissuers. Right now, these composers are hostage to Elvis's label: if they don't re-release, the composers don't get a cheque. But the elimination of the majors from the equation makes it possible for a much more diverse population of entrepreneurs to arrange for such a re-release.

It's pure sophistry to wring your hands about some theoretical economic situation that will arise for musicians in 2056 when their present-day copyrights expire; that would be fine if there weren't great groups of concrete, present-day musicians crying out to have this happen.

The holders of today's 50 year copyrights fall into three groups:

* Holders of commercially non-viable copyrights (almost all of them fall into this category) -- this group receives direct harm from term extension

* Giant corporations that non-negotiably forced their artists to assign all copyright t

What about the songwriters' children?

When a songwriter dies, his wife, children or other surviving relatives have a legal expectation to continue to earn a little royalty income from his songs. In most cases involving famous songwriters, the songwriter has formed a corporation and/or publishing company with a staff of employees who maintain the catalog of songs and continue to market them. Songwriters write songs with the idea that they will continue to bring in money for their spouses and children for decades after they die.

What's wrong with that?

One problem with the current reality of Internet file sharing is that successful songwriters have far less certainty of being able to provide for their loved ones in the future. I think that's very unfortunate.

Re:What about the songwriters' children?

You were using circular logic. Everything you mentioned -- novel, music, software -- revolves around copyright. What happens if you have a job like plumber, carpenter, electrician, mechanic, accountant, doctor, lawyer, nurse, cop, firefighter, etc.?

The problem isn't with you making money on a creation after you stopped, it is sitting on your ass and making money for almost a CENTURY after you stopped. Or making money after you're dead.

Copyright has ONE purpose, to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. If you are dead, you aren't promoting the progress of science or useful arts -- you're dead.

LIMITED time was meant as a prod, meaning that after a SHORT period whatever you created would belong to everyone and you could then create something new. If you live off your past successes for you entire life, you are not promoting the progress of science and useful arts, thus not deserving of a government enforced monopoly.

Don't like it? Create something new.

As far as passing more than liquid cash assets to your kids, that is a great idea. May I suggest real estate, vehicles, stocks, bonds, investments, boats, airplanes and most importantly, a solid work ethic that doesn't involve the idea of living off the imagination of a long dead relative.

Dead Beneficiaries

For if artists can sign petitions after they've died, then why can't they produce new recordings fifty year ago?

I thought they could. Hasn't 2Pac been producing new songs in the past consistently since his death (or am I wrong about the meaning of "newly discovered archival recordings")? How long has he been dead now? The last time I checked (a few years ago) he had put out and album or double album about every two years since his death. Pretty prolific, huh?

It kind of makes one wonder who copyrights are making money for. Certainly dead artists are not enjoying their profits. Or do spirits really need bribe money like in Chinese ancestral religion [wikipedia.org]?

The undead like to eat brains...

...not use 'em.

Died for tax purposes

Were these musicians hiding out in Millyways perhaps?

Sign ORG's petition in response

The Open Rights Group [openrightsgroup.org] is running a Release The Music [releasethemusic.org] campaign, with a petition against term extension that you can sign [releasethemusic.org]. There's also one asking for the right to privately copy CDs to iPods. [pm.gov.uk]

Are Slashdot readers as good at signing petitions as dead musicians?

I'm not sure why the Slashdot editors trimmed the ORG petition off my original submission - do they prefer whinging to doing something politically influential?

Ask The Live Ones

Has anyone checked with the living musicians whose names appear in the ad to determine if all of them know that they signed it?

IP doesn't exist

I've seen a lot of comments arguing about "intellectual property" and I just want to straighten something out right now: there is no such thing as "intellectual property". Ideas and property are nothing alike; ideas can be copied infinitely at no cost. Property cannot be copied infinitely at no cost. No one can own an idea.

The state (of the people, by the people and for the people) may temporarily grant someone exclusive _rights_ to the copying or use of an idea, but this is nothing like property rights. Property rights are in place because multiple people can't use a piece of property at the same time. Copyrights (and patents) are in place to encourage the advancement of new and useful ideas and art (go ahead, look it up, it's in the constitution).

Don't believe me? Go ask a lawyer about so-called "intellectual property". The first thing she will do is ask you "are you talking about copyrights, patents or trademarks?". You'll notice that none of those has anything to do with property. Don't use the phrase "intellectual property"; it's deceitful language used by manipulative people to try to get you into the frame of mind of treating ideas as property.

Re:First post

And used it in such an effective way, too.

Re:Copyright should permanently belong to the auth

I hope this is a polemic to show why the view is wrong and I'm just missing it...

Things should pass into the public domain. Everything should which is not based on tangable property. Tangable property should be taxed on death (possibly up to 100%).
If you think about how the world would look if we all had eternal rights to our property there would be about 100 people who would own everything and the rest of humanity would die, although a revolution would probably be inevitable anyway and then maybe some more sensible rules could come in.

It is also not judical theft, it is the state acting in the best interests of the population, in exactly the same way it does with people's other rights from the state of nature. They have a legitimate right to do this.

Re:Copyright should permanently belong to the auth

I think they should just charge "Property Tax" on "Intellectual Property". Then when you do your taxes, you have a choice as to how much you are going to value your "Property" at. If you value it at $100, then when you sue someone, you can only sue for $100 in damages. If you value it at $300,000,000, then you have to pay taxes on $300,000,000. Of course at any time you should be able to abdicate rights to the "Property", and then you would no longer have to pay taxes on it.

Re:Copyright should permanently belong to the auth

The ethical rule is this; if you make something, it belongs to you, and you can do what you want with it - and that includes handing it down to your kids to help them in their lives.

Very well put. Here, let me make a copy of that song. There, now it's all mine, if you want a copy, go make your own.

Re:Copyright should permanently belong to the auth

Except this is 50 years ex post facto. If anyone can copy your table after 50, would that make you go back and uncreate it? I mean, after 50 years, if you haven't turned a profit on your first table, either by selling it or appreciating its exclusivity, you're not going to. I think we can count on two hands the number of songs that are still making money after 50 years. And most of the people who made them are dead. So the question isn't "Do I have enough incentive to create this table?" because removing copyright extension takes no rights from you, it just doesn't give you extra rights. So the argument here is that artists will arise from the dead, build a time machine, and then go back and stop themselves from entering the recording business, because their kids and grandkids are only making thousands instead of tens of thousands.

Re:Copyright should permanently belong to the auth

We're not talking about stealing the table. We're talking about copying the table. There's a large difference. If someone copies the table, all you lose is the uniqueness of your table. You still have your table.