Extending Pop Music Copyrights 709
InklingBooks writes "According to TimesOnLine, the UK is considering doubling the copyright term for popular music to 100 years. That means the Beatles' "Love Me Do" and "Please Please Me," scheduled to to go into the public domain in 2013, would earn royalties for record companies until 2063."
Why not? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why not? (Score:3, Insightful)
Infact, if alot of the larger publishers are pushing for it, it most likely means its not fair.
Re:Why not? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think this is the right course of action, since I think these extensions are problematic at best, but I do think it's fair.
Re:Why not? (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright is meant to divide the proceeds between the public (e.g. the public domain) and the copyright holders. Except the copyright holders take all their input from society, and want to give none in return. In that context, it is not fair.
Re:Why not? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why not? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why not? (Score:4, Insightful)
There is as much property being taken from the public domain by the extension of copyright as there is money lost by someone copying something he never would have paid for in the first place.
For the copyright holders, piracy is loss of potential profit (loss of something they could have had). For us, extension of copyright is loss of potential public domain works (loss of something we could have had).
Re:Why not? (Score:3, Insightful)
Fuck. Disney. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Why not? (Score:4, Interesting)
Copyright should ONLY serve as an incentive to the artist. Extending them to 100 years presents zero extra incentive, and thus serves no purpose other than reducing public access to information and art.
The idea of copyright is to increase the total art available, not decrease the availability of art.
Re:Why not? (Score:4, Insightful)
IOW, something which has (possibly) permeated my entire life I can't incorporate in any way in my own creative work (black/white/grey album is a great example why this is a dumb situation)!
No matter what the legislative wankers say, copyright has effectively become infinite, for all intents and purposes, if during my lifetime I can't use something which was written before I was born.
Re:Why not? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why not? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why limit it to 100 years?
Let's just make it permanent.
Microsoft gets patents for anything[1] whenever they apply for it. Someone cries because Mickey Mouse might fall into public domain. Now, the Beatles might end up in a freeforall.
Does Jacko still own a substantial portion of the Fab Four? If so, it would be better for the Beatles' music to be available to all. It's better than lining the pockets of a pervert.
__________________________________
[1]"Someday,
Re:Why not? (Score:2)
> cries because Mickey Mouse might fall into public domain. Now, the Beatles
> might end up in a freeforall.
You appear to be confusing patents and copyright. They have different words because they describe different things.
Re:Why not? (Score:5, Insightful)
However, the general problem is similar. Large corporations have co-opted all forms of legal intellectual property protection to the detriment of personal rights. Whether we are talking about Angus McDonald's pub being sued by McDonalds Inc., effectively infinite copyright terms, or patent arsenals designed to forstall competition there is a general trend of those with the money and power abusing the IP laws to expand their power and increase their money.
Now, no one honestly expects the corporations and their governments to do anything else, but we don't have to like it and, hopefully in the long run, we won't have to accept it.
Re:Why not? (Score:5, Insightful)
Pervert? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, now. Let's wait to pass judgment until, y'know, the trial's over. I, for one, hope he is guilty, because if he's innocent, he'll have gone through hell and a half for no reason other than being really, really weird. And that shouldn't be a crime in America.
--grendel drago
Re:Pervert? (Score:5, Funny)
Disagree. Have you seen how weird he is?
Re:Pervert? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hoping someone is guilty just to salve society's conscience is a bit like robbing someone at gunpoint, and then afterwards hoping he was a criminal because then he would deserve it.
Much like the rationale for the Conquistadores raping and pillaging the Americas, because, after all, the natives were merely heathens, which made it "all right".
OJ And Jackson Guilty? (Score:3, Insightful)
As far as you know, OJ is innocent too. Sounds like you'd prefer the US justice system to be based on trial by media. Clearly you don't believe in innocent until proven guilty.
OJ was found not guilty by a jury of his peers. If you know some reason why he should be convicted, perhaps you should have stepped up during the tria
Attorney: "not guilty" does not imply "innocent" (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, there's a big difference between "not guilty" and "innocent." Neither the United States nor any other Common Law (english speaking) country has an "innocent" verdict.
If the jury is pretty sure that someone did it, that isn't enough. In fact, most (all?) of the OJ jury thought he did it, but that the proof didn't meet the standards.
OJ was acquitted due to sloppy legal work, sloppy judging, and the admission of flat out nonsensical quackery as "expert" testimony.
On top of that, Furman's interview in which he uses that word that he'd testified he'd never said a couple of times in each sentence, and in which he acknowledged planting evidence to frame black defendants he "knew" were guilty should have established reasonable doubt as a matter of law--no reasonable person could lack doubts after hearing that.
hawk, esq.
Re:Why not? (Score:4, Informative)
In the interest of fairness, I propose decapitations for everyone involved in this legislation.
Re:Why not? (Score:3, Insightful)
And that's why I have no problem with downloading music....if the royalty holders are going to steal from the people of the United States. Than I have no problem stealing back what is rightfully ours.
Re:Why not? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why not? (Score:3, Informative)
Nope. It was unfair to some copyright-holders. If the copyright on a work had already expired, it wasn't extended.
Suppose you have two authors, who died in either 1947 or 1949. Prior to the act, both of those copyrights would be gone today. After the act, the 1947 book is public domain, but the other will still be controlled until 2019. From the perspective of the inheritors of those estates, the extensions weren't the same at all. (Retr
Re:Why not? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is not entirely true. For example, the group Renaissance had a song that was based on a piece by Stravinsky which had passed in to the public domain. Subsequent legislation extended the copyright on the original piece, so in a CD re-release of their album had to omit that one song for reasons of copyright.
Re:Why not? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's probably because you don't create works of intellectual property for a living.
No one else gets the right to earn money for years old work.
What about investors, who invest in companies and real estate? The whole idea of retirement is to make money off "years old work".
Bach and Mozart produced far more music and worked far harder then the Beatles ever did, for basically nothing by todays standards.
Yes, but compared against
it is almost (Score:5, Funny)
well.. another 50 years feels like forever to me
Re:it is almost (Score:3, Informative)
You can see the note here [yahoo.com]
I find that kind of sad, not because of the beatles song but because it was the home for children without families
Re:it is almost (Score:2)
Well.. it was kinda old. So hopefully the children got a brand new home. Maybe a shiny new yellow submarine or something... kids love adventures
Re:it is almost (Score:2)
Re:it is almost (Score:3, Interesting)
But no, it seems you are not. You must be a big Beatles fan then =o)
Cheers.
Can we just tax copyright already? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can we just tax copyright already? (Score:5, Insightful)
Simply because that would be insane. For if you ever wrote a poem you'd have to pay for it, which sounds just crap. If you go to a publisher, and sell those poems by twelve a dozen, then he's got income, you've got income, and hey, if you don't live on the moon's dark side, you have to pay taxes after all that, don't you.
Re:Can we just tax copyright already? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, not necessarily. Nobody's interested in anything you haven't published. Once it is published, it irretrievably becomes part of the public consciousness. You are asking the public to do something very unnatural, which is not to use information that you've deliberately put in their heads. So, I think it is fair that copyright tax should be designed to kick in after publishing.
Actually, I'd like to do it like this: You are taxed on your copyright based on 1% of your peak annual revenues for a work. If you haven't published, that would be zero. Suppose you made a million dollars this year, your tax would be ten thousand dollars, hardly an amount that would be an economic distortion. Now suppose your million dollar seller isn't selling anymore, and you decide to take it out of print. Then you'd have to decide whether it was worth it to you to keep paying the annual ten grand or to let the work go public domain. If you were planning a sequel, of course you'd pay. If you were just cussed about it, then you'd probably still pay, but the amount you pay would be roughly based on how much money you've made in the past, and the proven potential of your work (and derivative works) to generate revenue.
There are two reasons I like this way of doing things. First, if you publish some obscure literary work aimed at a small number of people, you aren't asking much of the public not to use your work, so you don't pay much. It scales the benefits and costs of copyright fairly. Secondly, I imagine huge companies with vast libraries of IP would be forced to evaluate that IP and decide whether they're going to do anything with it. Right now they can just leave the creative work of prior generations rotting ina vault somewhere without ever thinking about it. They'll either decide to rerelease it, build some kind of derivative work on it, or let it go into the public domain. Disney can still keep the copyright to Mickey Mouse if they have a sufficiently profitable use for it.
Re:Can we just tax copyright already? (Score:5, Interesting)
There's another proposal I've heard: after an initial term (15 or 20 years), you pay a "copyright renewal tax" of $x per work.
This has several benefits: copyright of immediate works does not require registration, there is no complicated tax system[1], the first - most profitable - period is guaranteed for free, and (most importantly) it becomes easy to discover whether or not a work is in the public domain and who the rights holder is.
Oh, and it discourages IP hoarding, which is a real problem now. But it doesn't set the bar very high. Even a $1 per 15-year renewal wouldn't be that bad, and would confer numerous benefits.
Your proposal is an interesting one, though. Yours and this one seem to have slightly different aims.
It's the difference between taxing production and taxing rent seeking behavior. The proposal is Lawrence Lessig's, and there is much discussion of it out there.
[1] - the more complicated the calculation is, the more likely it will be abused by "special interests." You also bring in the IRS (auditing, valuation, paperwork). Simple "if it's not in the list as having paid $15, it's public domain" is something the Library of Congress could easily keep track of.
Re:Can we just tax copyright already? (Score:3, Interesting)
The differences in laws between countries would lead to a market for "copyright import agents" who would no doubt do their best to exploit foreigners seeking publication in a taxable country. (In a manner similar to US record companies ripping off rural (mainly Africa
Re:Can we just tax copyright already? (Score:3, Insightful)
I might also suggest a limited guaranteed monopoly period with no buyout and no tax, say 10 years, after which the owner must declare the buyout value and pay the annual tax. It's hard to figure out the value of a new, untested work.
Ah, screw it, just limit copyrights to 10 years with one renewal, then it's public domain. Isn't that what we originally had, and it worked fine?
Re:the virtue of the GPL (Score:3, Interesting)
Nonsense. In a world without copyright, there would be only the Public Domain. The Public Domain does not prohibit inclusion of content into commercial programs. A world in which that could occur would be very different than a world full of GPL-style sharing. The GPL is a poison pill to direct commercial competition.
(I'm ignoring Trade Secret and Patent, since they're not mostly not relevant to this discuss
Re:Can we just tax copyright already? (Score:3, Insightful)
Copyright, incidentally, is about money. Having a copyright provides a potential source of income, which hopefully will have provided an incentive for the artist to create the work in question, where otherwise he would not have. So it is all about commercial ventures.
If you would have created something anyway, then it's actually quite stupid to grant a copyright on it,
Re:Can we just tax copyright already? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Can we just tax copyright already? (Score:2, Redundant)
Re:Can we just tax copyright already? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Can we just tax copyright already? (Score:2)
Seriously, if a tax was added, it woudn't reduce the controls on copyrighted materials, nor would the executives decide to lower thier price points due to the tax. Instead, the government would collect a portion of your quickly dwindling paycheck to distribute to the major record labels, most likely through the hands of the major music associations.
By the time the money passes through the hands of the government, the music association, the record la
Re:Can we just tax copyright already? (Score:2)
It's been proposed before. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a good idea, as it ensures that all works that the owner didn't consider worthwhile renewing the copyright for automatically go into the public domain after a reasonable period of time - which is what copyright was originally intended to be.
Re:Can we just tax copyright already? (Score:3, Insightful)
The value of a person's home often doesn't correspond with their ability to pay property tax. For example, here in Massachusetts, h
This can be seen ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Giving the record companies more money as they rehash the same old talent.
It's amazing how record companies can make themselves sound like poor orphans with no money, food, heating, or shelter.
Re:This can be seen ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Every other business out there needs to stay competitive by creating new products, and actually use their brains to work out how to do this.
The recording industry just says "We once got someone to make a good product, took it over and made a killing from it. We need you to keep giving us money for it so we don't have to think about how to make another decent product in the futu
Record Companies? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Record Companies? (Score:2)
Because... (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to me that copyrights are turning from a temporary privilege into an actual property right, despite all indications that only a self-interested minority of our society wants that. So when are copyright holders going to pay property tax on their holdings?
Re:Because... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yea, this is one area where I think we've gone totally wrong. Copyright should last at most 10-20 years. Works that persist longer in the spotlight become more a part of the culture than a creation of the artist. For example, I doubt many people here know who actually wrote the "Happy Birthday" song, but everyone knows it, everyone sings it at a birthday party, and yet it's still under copyright.
Imagine a society where an orchestra couldn't play any classical music without acquiring the rights to that performance from a copyright holder that has been passed down through the centuries by inane copyright law and they end up paying a large amount of money for you to enjoy their performance. When a work of art persists for decades in the hearts and minds of a large group of people it becomes part of our unique culture and our government has the obligation to help protect that cultural identity IMHO.
As an artist there seems to be two camps, those who do it for the money and those who do it for the art. For the latter I would imagine they enjoy making money off something they love as a side effect, but if they couldn't sell a single song or book I'm sure they'd continue writing or singing. For the former group they'll wither away and leave us with less bubble gum pop bands, manufactured grunge groups, and corporate "gangsta" rappers, but in the end our cultural identity will thrive as a result. We'd be cutting out the crap and keeping the true art made by people who love their work for the sake of making it and not for the money it brings them... I guess it'd result in a situation like we have with open source programmers in the end.
Aw screw it, I guess I'm sounding like a big old commie now, but I had to get that off my chest. The fact that Mickey Mouse is still under the iron thumb of Walt Disney Corporation so long after Walt's death just annoys the hell out of me.
Re:Because... (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly. We wouldn't have many of the great Disney classics like Cinderella if the original story had still been under the same kind of copyright that Disney wants for its own works. Disney obviously benefited from works that had gone into the public domain, stories that are part of our common heritage and culture. After 75 years, Mickey Mouse is part of the popular culture. In a very real sense, he "belongs" to everyone now. It's time to let Mickey go to the people. Copyright is supposed "to promote
Re:Because... (Score:3, Insightful)
Quite the opposite. You are arguing in favor of a free market. Your ideas are closer to capitailst principles and I very strongly agree with you.
Don't forget that copyright is just a form of government intervention in a market. There is nothing commie about dislike of government intervention where it is not welcome.
Re:Because... (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree. I also believe that it should be renewable by the copyright owner until the owner dies, and that the copyright is not transferable to anyone else.
When you hear about the great grandchildren suing over "their" rights that their dead great grandmother's work (dead over 50 years mind you), something is wrong. I'm thinking of the recent "Gone with the wind" lawsuit.
So, can I sue the government for Social Security from my dead grandparents and great grandparents? Or their employers? Hey, you guys owe me money because my great grandfather worked for you over 50 years ago, plus pain and suffering to boot! WTF?
Now things of physical value that can be physically transfered from one individual to another is another story. If I had my great grandparent's original transcript for a work they did when they are alive, I'm entitled to sell it and deprive myself of ownership of that property, but I don't see where I have any right to rent the arrangement of words indefinitely.
I doubt many people here know who actually wrote the "Happy Birthday" song, but everyone knows it, everyone sings it at a birthday party, and yet it's still under copyright.
Yup. Some rich fuck "owns" it and gladly collects about $2 mil a year for it. Its an interesting read, find it here: http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/birthday.htm [snopes.com].
I will say that Mickey Mouse is a little different because it is almost synonymous with the Disney corporation. I believe that it can and should be trademarked and protected, but Steam Boat Willy copies (if anyone really wants them) should be in the public domain by now. Disney can sell original film cells for $10 billion a frame, but the story and singing and whistling is done.
This whole copyright debate is basically almost like any extremist's position. Like the NRA, MADD, or any other fanatical group. Their views are absurd and rigid, and its up to their opponents to bring them down a little and we meet somewhere in the middle.
One thing that is different about copyrights, is to ask "Who is being benefitted by having these absurdly long copyrights?" Is it your average Joe Smoe that creates the copyrighted material?
Nope.
Does it benefit society in general?
Nope.
It only benefits already rich people and corporations. It does little to nothing for the creators, and it deprives your average citizen, and adds one more thing to their lives that could be a criminal act. Citizen rights as we know it are becoming less and less every day in favor of the government and corporations (basically the same thing). This will continue until people get pissed off enough and start a riot or revolution. The thing that kills me is that we average folk way outnumber these assholes, but I guess we are too poorly organized and busy taking care of ourselves to do much of anything.
Late-blooming popularity (Score:3, Interesting)
>>>
Er, that's life? Seriously, if it takes 20 years for your work to become popular, too bad. I realize that popular culture changes, etc, over time, and thus, your work might not be appreciated at first. On the other hand, with anything else except IP, can you expect to be rewarded for work you did two decades earlier? Highly doubtful.
What you can hope for, if your work suddenly becomes popular later
surprised ? (Score:2)
seriuosly, did anyone expect this NOT to happen ??
Pure Genius (Score:5, Insightful)
Misplaced priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
Excuse me? EXCUSE ME??? The point of a band is to make money for its label???
What about the label paying its bands living wages? Or does that just not count?
What about using the internet to develop and promote new bands? That doesn't count either?
Thank god I live in France where my right to download CDs and movies is now protected by "activist judges".
So cover versions forever? (Score:2)
Seems to be a strong disincentive to write new songs because the distribution business finds it cheaper to repackage songs they already own! Why pay a writer?
Or will it become like art museums, where every generation goes to see the Picasso or the Turner and the only new art is weird art that isn't in a Turner style.
Imagine the future: "and here we have the work by the famous artist Kylie who liv
Sigh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's face it, unless the indsutry starts embracing the future and changing the way they do business, it's only a matter of time before they are rendered obsolete by self-publication and internet distribution by artists themselves.
Re:Sigh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why retroactive? (Score:5, Insightful)
Catchy advertisements (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Why retroactive? (Score:3, Insightful)
Think of the wonder that would be: all of WWII era, all that music, books, films, now legally downloadedable and shareable online.
Instead, thanks to the copyright acts of 1976 and 1998, we are stuck in stasis, with 1923's material not scheduled to enter the public domain until 2019, if we can avo
What the? (Score:5, Insightful)
If this goes into force, anything you hear today is unlikely to be returned to the public domain within the lifetime of your GRANDCHILDREN. This is completely fucking unacceptable.
Copyright is already 30 years too long. These media cartels have stolen our public domain and culture, and are renting it back to us in perpetuity.
I'm off to write to my MP.
GRRRRRR
Re:What the? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What the? (Score:4, Insightful)
The man is obviously an idiot if he thinks:
1) Increasing the potential profitability of their existing back-catalogues will encourage the record companies to invest in new acts.
2) Record companies will change their current investment in new acts based on potential extra revenue in FIFTY YEARS TIME.
I gritted my teeth and voted Labour last month, but with this and the renewed push for ID cards, they've lost my support within a month.
Idiots.
Re:What the? (Score:3, Insightful)
They got exactly what they wanted, so they were smart. They were honest, too. Labour made it quite clear they were going to push strongly for ID cards; if you don't like that policy, then you were stupid to vote for them. They also made it clear (by their actions in the patent debate) that they support strong IP in favour of big cartels. Again, voting
Re:What the? (Score:3, Informative)
Use it if you will!
START:
To
I am a citizen within your constituency, and I am writing to inquire about your personal stance upon an issue raised in a recent issue of The Times (June 05, 2005). The article, written by Andrew Porter, discusses plans to extend the length of copyright for popular music within this country to one hundred years.
I am worried at th
Re:What the? (Score:3, Insightful)
Granting a hundred year monopoly on having others performing derivative works is a completely different thing, and there should be a good reason for requiring the goverment police to forbid others to sing a song (written by you) that they like.
Copyright protection does not equal 'owning'. And why should someone be able to forbid others to use his ideas ? Should Newton be able to restrict how his ideas on calculating gravity be used
What about this song... (Score:2)
It is the greed that never ends...
It just goes on and on my friends...
One day the recording industry started doing it...
and now they'll forever continue doing it because...
whoops... now im gonna get sued.
How can this be beneficial to anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
Artistic protection! (Score:3, Insightful)
What a load of manure. Like record companies don't have enough money already. And as if classical music is easier to compose and hence needs merely 50 years.
What The Fuck Is The Justification? (Score:5, Insightful)
(s/innovator/innovations/ but it's all the same).
Artists do not commonly live for 100 years. Especially not 100 years from when they produce the work that gets them the most praise.
Even if the artist got 100% of the royalties from the copyright, extending it past the artist's natural lifetime is meaningless.
In addition, even compensating the artist for their entire natural lifetime is counter-productive, since it removes the driving force (according to traditional wisdom, above) behind their production or art. If you're singing to eat, then giving you all the money you'll ever need reduces your need to sing. This is the exact opposite of what copyright is intended for.
Finally, artists commonly don't even get 10% of the profits from their work. Why? Because the copyright is usually owned by a large corporation, which had no hand whatsoever in the creative, artistic work. They simply publicise the artist and distribute the art, and reap 90%+ of the profits from it.
Given this state of affairs, extending copyright does nothing but feed more money to already overcompensated multinationals, while either shutting out the originating artist or (if they own their own copyright and get all the profits) discouraging them from producing further art.
This is fucking obvious. Why don't people see it?
Or are they just blinded by all those dollar bills the entertainment industry keeps piling over their heads?
Re:What The Fuck Is The Justification? (Score:3, Insightful)
They *DO* see it, however they don't have billions of dollars to lobby with.
Re:What The Fuck Is The Justification? (Score:4, Interesting)
The frenchman who came up with it called it "author's rights".
I'm trying to remember his name... he was involved in the american war of independance... dang lack of sleep.
Anyway, the point of it was that in those days, the publishers were the only ones with the means to reproduce and distribute "copyrightable" material because printing presses were huge and expensive, and so the authors got screwed: they paid you a small sum for your labour and then made money off your work by simply printing it ad-nauseum.
Back then the publishers were opposed to copyrights. Now they twisted it and corrupted the system so that they once again get to screw people over. We gotta take the power back... don't ask me how though.
Re:What The Fuck Is The Justification? (Score:3, Informative)
> I'm trying to remember his name... he was involved in the american war of independance...
The guy you're searching for is Pierre de Beaumarchais [answers.com].
> Back then the publishers were opposed to copyrights. Now they twisted it and corrupted the system so that they once again get to screw people over.
"twisted" is an understatement. In Beaumarchais' own country, copyright now runs for the author's entire life, plus seventy years. I'm still trying to grasp why the hell some guy that's been dead for deca
Love (Score:5, Funny)
I act like a ho
You'll pay me some mo
so pleeeaaaheaaheaheaaaaasssee
Give me doe !!
Micahel Jackson! (Score:2)
Michael Jackson owns the publishing rights [straightdope.com] to a nice chunk of beatles music. If Michael plans on holding out for a few more child molestation lawsuits before he dies he really needs that revenue source to be maintained.
Think of the children! If this musical copyright expires there will be no money for the children to extract from Mic
James Purnell (Score:2, Informative)
Wise move... (Score:2, Insightful)
HOWTO: Neverending Copyright Extensions (Score:5, Interesting)
The Real Reason (Score:3, Interesting)
Now that I think of it, does this mean all of the music up to 1955 is now public domain? If so, someone should start a legal torrent site of public domain albums up through 1955.
Error in the article (Score:3, Interesting)
record company executives (Score:5, Funny)
He glanced around at the motley collection of thugs, pimps and record company executives that skulked on the edges of the dim pools of light with which the dark shadows of the bar's inner recesses were pitted. They were all very deliberately looking in any direction but his now, carefully picking up the threads of their former conversations about murders, drug rings and music publishing deals.
Modern times? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is this happening? Surely half a century ago artists/companies had copyrights, and they didn't last 100 years. Did any of those companies fold or artists starve because they couldn't get longer copyrights?
It seems to me that there is a lot of proof out there that prolonged copyrights are not needed for the copyright-owners to survive.
Perhaps somebody with a better historical view of copyrights can shed some light on the matter; is there any evidence in history that prolonged copyrights have such value as to warrant them?
I can understand that a copyright of just 1 year would be a bit too short for the artist to get his "morally right" compensation, but surely after 50 years it should have been enough?
Fair enough but with slight change. (Score:3, Interesting)
e.g. The only people who can receive ANY paymenmts in relation to copyrighted works are the original authors and/or the original performers of a work (in the case of people doing the writing and other people doing the performing both would get a share etc.)
The same for inventors. Only the original inventor gets any share of the copyright.
Furthermore these rights cannot be sold, leased or given away
And once all the original copyright holders have died the works become public domain.
That way only the people who are directly resonsible for the work get the credit. And a fucking pox on all middle men whose only purpose is to parasite and fuck up the creative process.
End Of Corporations? (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's look at movies, for a start. If there are (say) 100 people invilved in the creative side of a movie, then by your system all revenues from the movie in question would be split 100 ways. Make a blockbuster movie, each of the 100 people get four million dollars a head, and they're happy. So what about the 990 o
No economic justification either (Score:3, Insightful)
Sign of rotten new music (Score:3, Insightful)
My teenage son and his friends all listen to 1970s and 1980s rock music. When I was his age, I would not have been caught dead listening to my dad's ragtime...
Re:I'm all for it (not a troll, please read).http: (Score:5, Funny)
so really, I gotta know... (Score:2)
-truth
Re:I'm all for it (not a troll, please read). (Score:3, Insightful)
No matter how hilarious they are (and they are hilarious), they never crack me up as much as the serious, gullible responses they always provoke.
Re:I'm all for it (not a troll, please read). (Score:3, Insightful)
But anyway, banning someone from ever buying another CD (however you would do that) would be one way to assure that a person pirates for the rest of his life. Heightened aggression is just useless and sadly ignorant of history. When the British were flooding China with opium, China tried cruxifying dealers on the docks. Didn't stop it. Think of the literature and engravings about pickpickots at the pickpocko
Re:I'm all for it (not a troll, please read). (Score:3, Insightful)
You'd get more respect and sympathy if you hadn't claimed to have bought a successful niche business, abandoned your regular clientele, decided to compete with enormous multinational store-chains, stocked shitty Christian Rock that nobody (relatively speaking) wants to listen to, and run the company into the ground. You're clearly the fuckwit here, so you're less likely to garner that empathy so essential to a successful troll.
Nice attempt at igniting side-fi
Re:It's the Peter Pan connection! (Score:2)
I used to moderate the uk forums for a large multinational games console maker who doesn't make an operating system or have anything to do with Italian plumbers. Of the many rules we had to follow, deleting any lyrics from Happy Birthday was one of them. They just couldn't take the risk of being had for copyright infringement.
I'm almost ashamed to be human that such circumstances exist.
Re:So.... (Score:2)
However with most countries, it just means you can now record your own version of the song with the paying the writer(s) money. Also you could produce your own sheet music of it and even copywrite that.
Look at all the stuff from Bach, Mozart, etc on how it is treated.
Re:FFS... (Score:5, Insightful)