The Great Canadian Copyright Giveaway: Copyright Extension For Sound Recordings 309
An anonymous reader writes: Despite no study, no public demands, and the potential cost to the public of millions of dollars, the Canadian government announced yesterday that it will extend the term of copyright for sound recordings and performances from 50 to 70 years. The music industry did not raise term extension as
a key concern during either the 2012 copyright reform bill or the 2014 Canadian Heritage committee study on the industry. For Canadians, the extension could cost millions of dollars as works that were scheduled to come into the public domain will now
remain locked down for decades.
They should be doing the opposite (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They should be doing the opposite (Score:5, Insightful)
This encourages actually giving the people what they want sooner rather than later.
The thing is that most art can be divided into 3 categories - a) crap that no one would copy even without copyrights, b) pretty good work that need copyright protection for 5 years, but no one would copy after that anyway and c) mega-hits that earn so much money in the first 5 years that the original creators might quit and never do anything again unless we found a way to encourage them to create again - hence the copyright extension ONLY if they make a sequel.
Re:They should be doing the opposite (Score:4, Interesting)
The thing is that most art can be divided into 3 categories - a) crap that no one would copy even without copyrights, b) pretty good work that need copyright protection for 5 years, but no one would copy after that anyway and c) mega-hits that earn so much money in the first 5 years that the original creators might quit and never do anything again unless we found a way to encourage them to create again - hence the copyright extension ONLY if they make a sequel.
What about d) moderate successes that build a slower success.
The release dates for the last 5 albums I bought were 1993, 1994, 2012, 2013, and 2014. The 1994 purchase was from a band with moderate success but nowhere near a mega-hit. I think there's a lot of groups like that, essentially middle class musicians who do need the income from from older releases (though I can't find any numbers to suggest how significant or insignificant that income might be).
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5 years is fine - with copyright extension for sequels. That is, if you have a sequel within 5 years, then your original copyright can be extended for another 3 years,
This encourages actually giving the people what they want sooner rather than later.
The thing is that most art can be divided into 3 categories - a) crap that no one would copy even without copyrights, b) pretty good work that need copyright protection for 5 years, but no one would copy after that anyway and c) mega-hits that earn so much money in the first 5 years that the original creators might quit and never do anything again unless we found a way to encourage them to create again - hence the copyright extension ONLY if they make a sequel.
George Martin released A Feast for Crows in 2005, but didn't release A Dance with Dragons until 2011, so Game of Thrones is public domain under your suggestion and HBO need not pay him royalties?
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Yeah, well maybe next time he won't make people wait 6 years for the next book. ;)
Re:They should be doing the opposite (Score:4, Insightful)
The article makes is sound like this is a totally senseless, random act with no explanation, but that's a little misleading. While it's easy to argue that 50 years is already too long, Canada's 50 year term is also an outlier on the low end in the international community. Most other countries have a 70 year copyright term for recorded music, including the UK, France, Germany, Italy, etc. The US allows for 95 years. Having copyright terms that uniform across international boarders is useful.
Re:They should be doing the opposite (Score:5, Insightful)
> Having copyright terms that uniform across international boarders is useful.
Useful as an excuse to ping-pong term extensions across the Atlantic. Terms are extending 20 years every 20 years, hardly "limited times" let alone "promoting progress".
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Exactly this. Soon, everyone will slowly move to the "US Standard" of 95 years except for one country who will go with 110 years. Then we'll need to move to that to harmonize our copyright terms... except for that one country that enacted 130 years. Infinity Minus One copyright terms, here we come!
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One way to be consistent is for Canada to increase the length of their copyright terms to match everyone else's.
Another way to be consistent is for everyone else to decrease the length of their copyright terms to match Canada's.
Taking (Score:3)
Another way to be consistent is for everyone else to decrease the length of their copyright terms to match Canada's.
Copyright owners would argue that shortening the term of a subsisting copyright is an unlawful "taking" of their property. One country's constitution states: "Nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." Other countries likely have similar provisions on the books. So the government would have to tax its citizens to pay fair market value of the copyright in each affected work.
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The UK has a fifty-year term now. We extended ours just last year to seventy years, in order to match a European standardisation directive. The EU governmnent wants to get a unified term in all member states, and as a reduction in term anywhere would lead to very well-funded opposition, that means we all go up to match the longest term. Seventy years.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Remember that copyright also include include free software.
And 5 year or less copyright would be a huge blow to the FOSS community as it would make all 5 year old GPL software including linux into the public domain.
As a result we'll see plenty of software based on outdated GPL software just so that it can be made proprietary. Hardly a good thing.
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Read his answer on the shorter copyright question here, where he opposes a 5 year term too:
http://interviews.slashdot.org... [slashdot.org]
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50 years is already way too long. They should reduce it to 3-5 years. That would give the artist plenty of time to make a profit. Unfortunately, copyright as it is now implemented and enforced is entirely for the benefit of large corporate interests. It stifles creativity rather than promoting it.
This sounds like a horrible thing for smaller artists or labels. The only way to make record sales income under that term is to have a major promoter backing you. Good records that slowly build an audience? Not viable.
I actually think 50 years is appropriate, for a lifelong artist the stuff from the start of their career starts going public domain at the end of their career. If parts of their catalogue go public domain while they're still active then things start getting weird because the status is changing
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So anything I produce at the beginning of my career, say 21 years old, is good when I am still performing at age 70? Am I the Rolling Stones? 35 years should be plenty.
Being a musician is a job. You don't have to be the Rolling Stones to have a 50+ year career, particularly if you don't have the cash to retire early.
Though I do agree that 35 years would probably be decent as well though I'm not sure how much shorter I'd want to go. Note the comment I was responding to said 3 to 5 years.
Re:They should be doing the opposite (Score:5, Insightful)
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The word 'music' is entirely unecessary in that sentence.
Re:They should be doing the opposite (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They should be doing the opposite (Score:5, Informative)
Famous Copyright Infringement Plagiarism cases in Music [fairwagelawyers.com]
Music Lawsuits: Blurred Lines Thoughts [samsmusicalmusings.com]
HTH. HAND.
Re:They should be doing the opposite (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep the goal in mind. We want more and better art It doesn't matter how it happens. Careful that what you are calling plagiarism really is plagiarism. And even if it is, if it is to the net benefit of society, then it is good. We can work out ways to compensate the original author, in those cases where plagiarism has really happened. It has been a long established principle that you can't copyright laws of nature or basic information. We're already contemplating the problem of someone generating every possible sequence of notes up to some small number, maybe 4, and copyrighting them all. 88^4 is only 60 million, which might seem too many to register at the copyright office, but definitely is not too many for a computer to go through.
Everyone loses when more money goes to lawyers than artists. Everyone loses when established industry bribes lawmakers to outlaw new distribution methods no matter how much more efficient they are. The entertainment industry would love, just love to turn the clock back to 1985, before mp3, Napster, and the Internet, and force the public to get new music on CDs. Never mind that distributing music via CDs costs hundreds of times more money in overhead. They would throw 90% of all our wealth away, their own included, if that increased their control. They've been told, repeatedly, that he universe does not work the way they imagine and wish, but that hasn't stopped them from foolishly wasting money on lawyers to try to force things to work the way they want.
Background music in grocery stores (Score:3)
If you disapprove of [major music publishers'] practices, the solution is very simple: do not buy from them.
That's harder than it sounds. I buy food at a grocery store, and a percentage of what I pay ends up going toward playing the major music publishers' music over the speaker system.
Re:They should be doing the opposite (Score:5, Informative)
So, are you ready to demonstrate, how copyrights have sniffled the development of Jazz, Rock-n-Roll, or Rap, for example?
If not, then your "concerns" about sniffling are nothing but attempts to spread FUD.
It has traditionally been allowed. All of those genres have grown up with being allowed to sample, make covers, and especially make music that sounds like other artists (what do you think genres are in the first place?)
Recently it was made illegal to make music that sounds like other artists: http://arstechnica.com/tech-po... [arstechnica.com]
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The _real_ discussion point is that Copyright was designed to provide
a limited amount of exclusive time to the originator of the work.
Does anybody know why the original terms were set to the number of
years that they were?
Anybody?
Okay, they were drafted in a time when a letter could take a month to
reach its destination. Things moved slowly then, thus 14 years.
If anything, with modern technology, the time should decrease to match
the advancement in technology.
10 years should be the norm. That is a fact.
Re:They should be doing the opposite (Score:4, Interesting)
> 10 years should be the norm. That is a fact.
Or less. The value of materials older than that is limited. There are, of course, counterexamples, but they are the exceptions to the rule. Something like 99.9% of all songs that receive any income do so in the first 18 months, and that number continues to shrink as the companies churn out pop.
But forget music, what about snapshots? Every selfie you take is covered for 70 years after you die. Clearly there is something very wrong with that.
Re:They should be doing the opposite (Score:5, Insightful)
Judging if one song sounds sufficiently like another is an endless opportunity for debate. Much simpler to have a clear expiration of copyrights.
Re:They should be doing the opposite (Score:5, Insightful)
The Marvin Gaye estate successfully sued Robin Thicke and Pharrell for "Blurred Lines" for copyright infringement winning over $7 million in damages. The Marvin Gaye *estate* did that. The purpose of copyright is to let the creator profit from their work so they will continue creating works of art, but Marvin Gaye died 31 years ago! It doesn't matter if Blurred Lines is a ferociously terrible song that probably ruins people's appreciation of "Got to Give It Up." It makes absolutely no sense to claim that copyright is protecting the artist's livelihood.
Re:They should be doing the opposite (Score:5, Informative)
The best thing that can be said about Blurred Lines is that the Weird Al parody of it [youtube.com] was fantastic.
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Yes, yes it was.
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IS being the subjective word.
Define 'IS', please
Re:They should be doing the opposite (Score:4, Insightful)
Most everything is derivative. It's not possible to be uninfluenced by copyrighted material.
Also, how is it remotely fair that the IP owners can perpetually reap income from work that was performed even 10 years ago let alone 70? Most of us get paid once for the work we do. Are the IP owners (not necessarily even the creators...) so much more deserving than the rest of us? Fuck everything about this system. IP does not exist. It's a figment of our collective imagination. I'm all for fair play but perpetual IP protection is not it.
Re:They should be doing the opposite (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly this. When copyright was at a sane length, the reason for it was so you didn't release a work and have that work immediately re-released by a dozen shady publishers who didn't give you a dime for your efforts. When something like that happened, it was a serious threat to creativity. After all, why work for years writing a great novel just to have six publishing companies steal it, print their own editions of it, and not give you any money for it. Worse, their editions would compete with your own edition and you would be making less sales/money as people bought the "wrong" edition.
The balance to this, though, was that your temporary monopoly only lasted a short time. After 14 years (28 years if you filed for a one-time extension), your work went into the public domain and almost all bets were off. You still couldn't republish it and attribute it to someone else, but you could write a sequel or base another work on it without the original author's consent.
This went fine for the most part until copyright holders saw the works entering the public domain and envisioned dollar signs leaving their pockets so they got the copyright terms extended again and again until they are, for all intents, perpetual. If a work is created today, is corporate-owned (so we don't get into "life of the author", and the terms aren't extended again (the latter being a big IF), my 8 year old has only the slimmest of chances of seeing that work in the public domain. (He would need to live to 103.) If he has a child at 25, my grandchild would see the work in the public domain when he turns 78.
I know we love extolling thinking long term, but what possible incentive does it give knowing that a work you create in 2015 will only enter the public domain in 2110?!!!
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Ideas are not physical things. They are smoke and light. Once you release them, they is no longer exclusively yours, aside from the possession of your copies. The taking of real, physical property involves real, involuntary displacement or separation.
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Classic chefs have 5 mother sauces. From Bechamel, Veloute, Espagnole, Hollandaise, and Tomate come most every sauce you've tasted in typical cuisine. When a chef takes one of those sauces, modifies it, and creates a brand new flavour, by your own rules, he is not very creative. In fact, based on your rules, no classical chef can ever be creative, no matter how hard they try.
Yet nobody shares your opinion. Could you inform us why? Or will the peanut gallery fill in the conclusion for you?
The same is pr
Re:They should be doing the opposite (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with functionally infinite copyright isn't really that you lose the ability to copy the material for free. It's that the owners retain the exclusive right to distribution - and if they decide to stop making the material available it's lost. Perhaps there's some provision in the law that requires copyright owners to periodically reassert their rights in order to keep them - or better, a requirement that the owners offer the material for sale in order to keep the exclusive rights.
There's sort of a parallel issue with patents. The biggest problem with software patents IMO was the inability to get at material locked up in patented data formats. If an audio track was in MP4, and the only way to get at the content was to buy a copy of Windows that comes with a free MP4 player - or possibly buy an expensive MP4 player from Fluendo or some other company that licensed the ability to implement the CODEC, then you're out of luck trying to consume content you've paid for. Not exactly a copyright issue, but at the same time it's a case of intellectual property being held hostage to the whims of a corporation that are leveraging a file format in an anti-competitive way. It comes down to the point where there's no practical way to enforce sanity in IP law except to limit what can be monopolized that way.
Not true for music (Score:2)
It's that the owners retain the exclusive right to distribution - and if they decide to stop making the material available it's lost.
Spot on in general, but not for music. Thanks to "mandatory licensing" systems in the United States and possibly other countries, anyone willing to pay the statutory fee can reproduce it under limited circumstances. I don't think mandatory licensing covers wholesale physical reproductions or digital downloads, but it does cover sampling and it does cover playing the complete work over the airwaves (you (the radio station operator) do have to have a copy to play of course).
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Terrestrial radio is simply exempt from the public performance restrictions of copyright law. There's no licensing, period.
That's some of the strongest evidence that copyright, particularly as it is now, is unnecessary. The music industry would _love_ to be able to stop unlicensed terrestrial radio broadcasts, even though there are mountains of undisputed economic data showing that the industry as a whole would be _worse_ off if radio stations were required to license.
Why? It's a kind of collective action p
Re:They should be doing the opposite (Score:4, Interesting)
The other problem is orphaned works. Take a random video game from the 80's and try to find who owns the rights to it now. Unless it was a big name company at the time, you're likely to have to navigate through a thicket of legal acquisitions, sales, bankruptcy proceedings, etc. It can be an extremely challenging effort just to find out who owns a work published 30+ years ago.
Now imagine that it is 2095 and you want to publish a "classic" from 2015. How would you track down the rightful owner over 80 years?!!
I'd like to see a renewal system in place. Ideally with limited renewals (e.g. 2 renewals and you're done) or ever-increasing renewal fees (e.g. $5 for first renewal, $50 for 2nd renewal, $500 for 3rd, etc.). This way, you would not only have a public record of who owns what, but you would force companies to either give up their unused works or pay more for them. Maybe Star Wars is worth renewing for a 10th time, but is RANDOM_CULT_HIT_FROM_1975?
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There's sort of a parallel issue with patents. The biggest problem with software patents IMO was the inability to get at material locked up in patented data formats.
The format is just a container. You can get that song in the MP4 format in an MP3 format, or as an Ogg file, or a WAV, or an AIFF, etc., etc. How does a patent on the MP4 format prevent you from getting at the material? Unless your real complaint is that the manufacturer only provides it in one format... in which case, isn't your real problem with the manufacturer, not the patent?
It's like complaining that you only have a flathead screwdriver but your new shelving system requires Phillips or Robertson, and
Sifling uncreativity (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh really? Go listen to Paul's Boutique by the Beastie Boys and say that again with a straight face. Huge chunks of that album are samples and remixes, and it is a rather famous example of how creative you can get reusing copyrighted material.
There are all sorts of works of art that are based off of using other people's creations in even more direct ways. Weird Al has been creating pop music parodies for decades that are based on other people's material, he seems pretty creative. Look at Johnny Cash's cover of the song 'Hurt', originally recorded by Trent Reznor. It was so good that Trent himself said that it wasn't his song anymore.And there are literally thousands more examples like these.
Saying that you cannot be creative by re-using other people's work is a very small minded view of art.
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Previous content has always inspired others to come up with new material and that's been more than common for as long as we can recall. Protecting the original content doesn't hurt creativity, proof is the amount of content available today.
And if you use someone's copyright content all you have to do is the pay the royalty.
As for Weird Al, he pays royalties. Feel free to read this article:
http://www.bkrlegal.com/blog/2... [bkrlegal.com]
Debate fail (Score:3)
That is a pointless argument, as you have nothing to compare it to. I could just as easily make the counter claim (which is just as hollow) that there would be twice the content available if the laws were different.
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http://www.thefreedictionary.c... [thefreedictionary.com]
Check the definition of stifle. If that law had the impact stated it would not have allowed for as much music to have been released since it's implementation.
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There are all sorts of works of art that are based off of using other people's creations in even more direct ways. Weird Al has been creating pop music parodies for decades that are based on other people's material, he seems pretty creative. Look at Johnny Cash's cover of the song 'Hurt', originally recorded by Trent Reznor.
Weird Al writes new lyrics and sometimes, new arrangements. The Beastie Boys used sampling and remixes to make an entirely new song. Johnny Cash simply performed a cover with the original lyrics and music. If "someone likes my version better" is enough to destroy a copyright owner's rights in the original, then under your theory, Glee just destroyed most music copyrights and shouldn't ever have to pay royalties. Is that what you want? A world with more versions of Glee?
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By allowing authors to benefit from their work for 70 years you do not motivate them to create more material. Hence, less material leads to stiffed creativity.
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That statement of yours is pretty much cancelled by the fact that there's an increasing amount of creative content being released daily.
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There was a pretty good example last month [slashdot.org]. I don't think any musician listening to the two songs would say one is copied from the other. Maybe inspired by, but not copied. Nearly every march has horns playing upbeats, a trio section, and a stinger at the end. That doesn't mean the estate of John Phillip Sousa should be suing every composer of marches who came after him.
But even when you are "copying" the nature of copyright law still stifles innovation of transformation. I arrange music for a wind ensemble
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What an artist created is his and there's nothing wrong with the artist needed to be notified (and compensated when applicable) for usage of their work. I think there's more value in defining what is copying vs what is innovation from copyright material than there is into trying to remove rights to old copyright. It would also be important to have a time limit for which an artist can pursue another artist for copyright infringement for similar work.
There are plenty of artist out there that have used existin
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The copyright mostly protects the usage of said content. There is law in place to allow parodies and reuse of content within set parameters. I think people are having a knee jerk reaction to this change that has little to no impact for day to day artists.
Fact is that Canada has been known for being loose on it's copyright laws especially when it comes to piracy so I'm not sure why people are up in arms.
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Disney only exists because they were allowed to base their works on public-domain material. [roarofwolverine.com]
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I don't know how that's an argument. I'm more interested in what really happened since 1998. Fact is that we have access to more and more creative work, not less. If you can't see that they take the blind fold off and look around.
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There are thousands of songs released monthly (and that doesn't include the indie scene, or any other media productions that include music). So I guess to your eyes the fact that lots of creative content makes it to our ears doesn't count as proof that creativity is still very possible.
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The argument was valid in the context it was used.
See part of the definition: Creativity can also be defined "as the process of producing something that is both original and worthwhile"
It didn't stifle creativity, instead it stifled innovation from copyright material or creativity inspired from copyright material (which I still don't agree to be true). Many artist have been inspired by music of their favorite artists and same goes for artist before them. Elvis Presley was inspired music mostly cherished by
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I agree but do we drop all laws because of one case? Heck, lets remove all cops from our streets because .1% of them are A-holes.
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The Carmina Burana was a famous case: there were several mashups of the Carmina Burana with house-music in the 90's and they were all killed off by the composer's widow who didn't like house music.
Copyrights kill creativity.
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5 Years from public performance, sale or distribution. Think thats a bit better let somebody hoard up a lifetime of work with the timer starting when they sell/show or otherwise make it public.
See? (Score:3)
We're all really American, after all.
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The MIAA mafia has no borders. This is just an example of using their political influence to get another nation's laws in conformance with their agenda.
Why is this surprising? (Score:5, Interesting)
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That's because the demands were copyrighted and not in the public domain!
Rip-Remix-A-Manifesto (Score:2, Interesting)
Funnily a documentary made by a Canadian a few years ago talks all about this and how copyright in it's current state is a pile of BS https://vimeo.com/8040182
Copyright extensions are pure scams (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether or not a longer copyright term will help promote the arts are encouraging more investment in art production is debatable. I have a strong oppinion, but so do many others with the opposite.
However, there is no theory whatesoever that retroactively extending copyright terms does anything to promote the creation of new art/culture (recall, the whole point of government granted copyright monopoly in the first place.) In fact, there is strong evidence that works still under long copyright are supressed until they become public domain.
I think we can conclude that any politicians singing on to retroactively extend copyright terms are clearly corrupt.
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I think we can conclude that any politicians singing on to retroactively extend copyright terms are clearly corrupt.
Its to protect a secret cache of Gordon Lightfoot recordings. Worth untold sums of money.
More important suppression (Score:2)
In fact, there is strong evidence that works still under long copyright are supressed until they become public domain.
More importantly, it suppresses derivative works until the underlying original falls into the public domain.
If I were to create a fictional story, it's very likely that the things I have read in my life will subconsciously influence what I write.
To protect myself legally, I have two things that can protect me:
1) Don't publish my work until after all works that exist today are out of copyright, or
2) Base my work on something that is in the public domain (Shakespeare and ancient myths are common sources for w
God damn! (Score:2)
Right when Baby Sittin' Boogie was about to go public domain!
Coming soon, the TPP (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds like a precursor to the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Hardly Surprising (Score:4, Informative)
the Canadian governments are puppets to their corporate overlords and have historically supported incumbent monopolies over competition and innovation.
I bet Scott is behind this (Score:2)
He's a dick.
Copyright has a good side (Score:5, Funny)
There's a lot of bad feeling on this thread about the extension of copyright, but there are a lot of positives. For example:
- Copyright income lets bands keep on making great music. It's likely that with a short copyright term, U2 wouldn't have made an album after 1990.
- The income allows artist to perform great philanthropic and charitable deeds. Let's face it: the United Nations as it is today is almost completely down to Bono.
- Artists support great works in other fields. E.g. would the Ferrari LaFerrari exist without buyers who relied on copyright income? I think not and that would be a tragedy.
This is a modest extension and a good thing for everybody.
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U2 didn't make anything 50 years ago, their 1990 work wouldn't hit public domain until 2040 in Canada. They'll be dead by then, or as good as, but now this change pushes that back to 2060. Do you not even thing before you speak?
Rather than extending copyright, perhaps these people should investigate tax dodgers like Bono, and close the loopholes that allow them to avoid paying like everyone else?
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You joke, but a shorter copyright would actually encourage U2 to keep making music forever!
So, in spite of long copyright terms, U2 kept making music. These long terms didn't even solve the one problem that could have benefited consumers.
Public domain? (Score:3, Interesting)
Does anyone know if *any* work has become public domain in the last few years in US and Canada? From what I see it just sounds like anything that's was copyrighted will now forever be copyrighted as copyright gets extended by X years every X years (with X=20 here).
Re:Public domain? (Score:4, Interesting)
Does anyone know if *any* work has become public domain in the last few years in US and Canada? From what I see it just sounds like anything that's was copyrighted will now forever be copyrighted as copyright gets extended by X years every X years (with X=20 here).
In the USA, the answer is "no". Unfortunately, some years ago the classical music label Naxos got greedy and put out a CD in the USA of a 1930s classical work, specifically Pablo Casal's recordings of the complete Bach cello suites. In Europe this recording had clearly entered the public domain, but not in the USA. In fact, there was no question that it was still under US copyright at the time Naxos put it out. Not only was it under copyright, but the US copyright owner (Capitol Records) had their own copy in print and sued Naxos for copyright violation. It was really idiotic for Naxos to try to get away this in the US market and they lost the case. But a worst case scenario happened in the case. The court that heard it (in my opinion) basically made up the law and came to the conclusion that every recording every made or sold in the USA, even as far back as Edison's first attempts in the late 1800s, was still under copyright in the USA because they basically claimed that "common law copyright" protected them until the US law covered them. Naxos couldn't really appeal this because they had no way to argue that what they did was legal, so this horrible court decision that all US sound recordings are still under copyright became US law. Short of convincing Congress to pass a law on the subject, we're basically screwed now as there's nothing ever recorded or sold in the USA that is in the public domain at this time. Do note that this crazy legal finding doesn't apply to books, movies or anything else.
Nobody demanded publicly? (Score:2)
But somebody must have paid secretly. At one point in time this was called bribery and people doing this and got caught were put in jail. Nowadays it seems to be the law of the land... Oh no, the law of the chosen few - chosen by god or something like that.
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But somebody must have paid secretly. At one point in time this was called bribery and people doing this and got caught were put in jail. Nowadays it seems to be the law of the land... Oh no, the law of the chosen few - chosen by god or something like that.
Nobody Canadian did. The US has been demanding it publically for a long time.
Why even bother with time limits (Score:2)
why hot just make it infinite and automatic transfer to the artists offspring. Really with 70 who cares might as well be infinity,
OT: I'm waiting for a US challenge to Life+ terms (Score:2)
If I'm young and I write something today and I die 80 years later, the copyright term will outlast everyone alive today and is therefore longer than any reasonable definition of "for a limited period of time."
When the time comes I hope someone sues to declare all works in the public domain as soon as there is nobody left alive who was around when that work fell under copyright.
Unfortunately nobody can make this challenge until the 2030s at the earliest, since everything put under copyright before 1923 is al
Society (Score:4, Interesting)
Solution to copyright extension (Score:2)
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Why not? Artificial/arbitrary copyright duration was created to screw the little guys (artists). What rational argument is there that makes it right to strip ownership from the copyright holder after a few decades? Does real estate become public domain after 100 years of ownership?
If computers and the internet had not been invented, you would need to purchase vinyl or tape to listen to the music giving infinite duration profits to record publishers and only 50 or so years to copyright holders (typically cre
Re:Raise Them To Infinity! (Score:4, Interesting)
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Does real estate become public domain after 100 years of ownership?
I wouldn't want to pay indefinite royalties to the construction company/architect for a cookie cutter house design. Would you ?
Re:Raise Them To Infinity! (Score:5, Insightful)
Or have the original architect or construction company forbid me from modifying my own house. Or prevent me from selling said modified house to a new owner.
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Or have the original architect or construction company forbid me from modifying my own house. Or prevent me from selling said modified house to a new owner.
Word of advise. Never buy an house designed by a known architect. They sometimes have those kinds of conditions. I shit you not. Though it is more common in big business or government offices that signed something stupid when they had their new building designed.
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Maybe okay to charge for something spectacular like the the leaning tower of Pisa etc. There's no way you can get recurring royalties for something as ordinary as a minor tweak of existing house designs. That's like an employee wanting a cut of company profits for implementing bubblesort in the company's moneymaker software.
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How about paying royalties to the painter based on the number of people that walk or drive by and look at my house?
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You would not be charged indefinitely for the house design in the same way you don't get charged indefinitely for possessing a music album -- i.e., you only pay once in both cases for purchasing copyrighted content. Indefinite payment comes from the middleman (the construction company or the music distributor/retailer), and not the end user.
So if house designs were copyrighted, the
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Most copyright by individuals lasts till many years after they die. Tell me how creators are getting screwed out of their rightful income after they've already kicked the bucket?
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The same way the children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of real estate owners would get screwed if their million dollar properties were seized by the government and made public domain after about 100 years of ownership by the first owner.
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Please try an analogy that actually makes sense. Putting physical properties on the same level as intellectual properties is just stupid.
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Real estate isn't something that's created by humans. Its part of our planet, which is limited. You can easily copy content. The only purpose copyright exists is to create an incentive for people to create works. The creators themselves won't bother whether the copyright becomes public domain 50 years or 70 years after their death.
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So you're arguing that humans should have more ownership rights over something they did not create, land, and less ownership rights over something they did create, copyrighted content? Hmmm.
I'm sure the copyright content creator and his descendents disagree.
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So you're arguing that humans should have more ownership rights over something they did not create, land, and less ownership rights over something they did create, copyrighted content? Hmmm.
No, they should have ownership over things that cost money to reproduce. And they should not have ownership over an idea their parents created.
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So you're arguing that humans should have more ownership rights over something they did not create, land, and less ownership rights over something they did create, copyrighted content? Hmmm.
Its hard to copy a piece of land, and now have two of it.
The creators themselves won't bother whether the copyright becomes public domain 50 years or 70 years after their death.
I'm sure the copyright content creator and his descendents disagree.
Please note that the creator doesn't own the content anymore, often they have to give it to a company. Also, the law wasn't written for descendants to live off ideas of their anchestors. The 50 years rule has been made so that people can economically adjust to their parent's death, so that additional to the loss of the beloved family member there also isn't an immediate economic crisis.
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While you can't copy it, you can simulate a copy by building multistory buildings like highrises and skyscrapers.
Who cares? The copyrighted content is a commercial asset and usually descendents benefit from them. There is no need to write a special law about obvious things.
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When you are creating some content, like a book, neither its initial success nor its long term success is measurable. This is abused by labels which you have to give your whole copyright rights to. It either has some value, or its completely worthless.
Also, which incentive does it create for content creators to extend periods of existing works? Will they produce more content? I mean the copyright already fills their lifespan, what is there more to do? If periods are extended, then it should only happen for
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There was a court case raised recently - not sure if it has started or finished yet - by descendants of Goebbels' family. Yes, *that* Goebbels, Hitler's rentamouth. His family are claiming copyright for his words - they want cash for quotes.
70 years is just long enough to cover that.
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Sure you can record things just fine and home. The production quality tends to suck, the lack of recording engineers with a clue is obvious even to my tin ear. Yes there are the odd gems in the rough but very very few and far between.
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Claim ownership of prior work publish and then destroy puny opponents in court obviously