Consumers vs. IP Owners: The Future of Copyright 415
conJunk writes "The BBC has a thoughtful article about new challenges in copyright. The problem: The rights to the audio recordings of the Beatles first album will expire in 2013. While consumers stand to benefit from competing releases of the materials, the copyright owners are of course terrified. And the artists? This one doesn't even seem to affect them."
Who owns the song? (Score:4, Informative)
Naturally - they still hold the copyright on the lyrics and music. So the performance moves into the public domain, but that doesn't mean nearly as much as the copyright status of the lyrics and music. Nobody will be performing songs from "Please Please Me" for free. But royalty payments for the album itself will dry up.
Of course, a lot can happen in seven years.
-h-
Duration (Score:4, Informative)
Which is one of the reasons Disney was among those who fought tooth and nail to get copyrights extended to 70 years after the creator's death. Now they've re-acquired the rights to the first character Walt created and lost to someone else, back when he was paying his own dues.
Of course it's rarely the dead guy who cares about making more money, it's those who feel some eternal sense of entitlement.
Just imagine where we'd be if Mozart's works were still held by his heirs. Back in his day after the initial performance works fell to the public domain, which was to encourage the creator to be more productive. Now we have a system where the same tired crap gets dragged out for years and years and someone build theme parks around it.
When was the last time Mickey Mouse actually appeared in an original cartoon or film?
Re:What is the Problem Here? (Score:3, Informative)
Congress calls them "copyright owners" (Score:5, Informative)
Please, stop using the words "owner", owns" etc. when you're talking about copyright and similar things.
Precise discussion about law uses words defined in the letter of the law. The statute in question, 17 USC 101 [copyright.gov] et seq., defines and uses the phrase "copyright owner".
Re:Whats the problem? (Score:3, Informative)
michael jackson (Score:2, Informative)
The Corruption of Copyright Law (Score:4, Informative)
In 1790 Congress passed the Copyright Act, which set the period of a copyright at 14 years, with the opportunity for the original author to renew for a second 14 years if he was still alive. This law existed unchanged for the next 100 years. The feeling of the original lawmakers, who were, incidentally, the same people who wrote the Constitution for the most part, was that copyrights and patents encourage authorship, science, and industry by providing a limited monopoly to authors and inventors. This monopoly was required to expire after a short time so that the public could then reap the benefits of these new works in their turn. There was, therefore, a balance between the good of encouraging authorship and invention with a limited monopoly, and the good of public ownership after a short period of time.
Since 1890 Congress has seen fit to extend the term of a copyright eleven times. It has gone from a maximum of 28 years in 1790 to the life of the author plus 70 years currently, or 95 years if the ownership is corporate. The issue that prompted congress to enact all of these extensions had nothing at all to do with encouraging invention, art, or science, and everything to do with the fact that valuable corporate properties such as the copyright for Micky Mouse were due to expire. The clear and unequivocal result of this Congressional effort is that the public suffers by not being able to freely access and use works that would have long since become public property under the intent of the constitutional framers . . . and the corporate copyright owners maintain their lucrative legal monopolies. There is no question at all of public benefit here, only corporate subsidies at public expense.
http://breakthelink.org/Costs.php [breakthelink.org]
Public Geo Data (Score:3, Informative)
Nice Exaggeration (Score:2, Informative)
More like there are a few hundred to each big success. I don't see too many Foyles [foyles.co.uk]-sized book shops around the cities I visit most, to accomodate the millions of starving authors to go with Clancy, King, Rowling, Pratchett, Crichton, et al.
What you rather shamefully overlooked is for most trade paperbacks, the initial order by distributors and bookstores, immediately after publication, is where most of these authors sales are going to occur. After the store has returned unsold extras or tossed them on the bargain table, you're hard pressed to find them again except at a used book shop. A second run of a relatively unknown author is an exceptional thing and I do know a few who have been lucky enough to have garnered enough of an audience to see that, after several years on the shelf. Nothing is preventing them from doing that. But you seem to assume there are greedy bastards lurking around the land itching to reprint obscure books which are three years after publication. Considering the overhead of the printing business that's pretty silly.
BEATLES COPYRIGHT LAST FOREVER IN THE US! (Score:4, Informative)
2 types of copyright: (Score:2, Informative)
The copyright on the recordings is held by the record company, in this case EMI. They collect on sales and performances (eg on radio or TV) of the actual record, and pay a set royalty to the artists, and also the producer. This is the copyright that is going to expire.
So, when it does, Ringo won't collect anymore on his royalties for drumming on the album, and since he didn't write the songs, won't get any of that money either. Paul will still collect on songwriting royalties for this and all other versions of the tunes on the album, but obviously won't get any royalties for having played on the album either.
Thought I would clarify since about 3 people above and below have got it wrong.
Re:Congress calls them "copyright owners" (Score:2, Informative)
"copyright owner" != the one who owns X.
X = an idea or concept or work that does not derive its value from its physical properties.
Are you sure about that? (Score:3, Informative)
I seem to recall Jon Katz doing just that several years ago, with everyone's posts. I doubt the book sold many copies, but still....
Congress is not so disrepectful yet. (Score:5, Informative)
They own the copy right, not the work. The right is the exclusive ability to duplicate the work. A right is never property, even when it's artificially created by the state and may be traded for real property. People get confused about that, which lends to the disgusting coporate welfare known as perpetual copyright. If you can own a song, like a bag of marbles the ownership should never end. Your government is not yet so asinine as to say a song can be owned.
Indeed, Congress does not even believe in "Intellectual Property". While the terms occurs some nine times in the definitions and scope you cited mostly referencing a 2002 law which is named that way. There is no definition and, hopefully, never will be.
Re:Drowning in media (Score:3, Informative)
Re:BEATLES COPYRIGHT LAST FOREVER IN THE US! (Score:3, Informative)
First, this lawsuit only has application in the state of New York. Naxos can continue to sell these discs in every other state. Second, Naxos's claim was that because the discs were PD in England, so to were they in the US, which isn't quite correct.
I understand they found their own, truly PD masters in England, but the performance in the recording is still copyrighted in the US.
The reason this is even an issue is because congress got a little lazy with copyright rewrites back in the early 1900's. Basically, they decided that they were going to continue to handle everything written, but that they'd let the states handle music recordings. As such, we ended up with a wide array of state copyrights, but only on music (well, and player piano rolls, which was the original reason for the rewrite anyway.)
This is from the court's statement:
Capitol commenced an action against Naxos in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in 2002. The complaint set forth claims of common-law copyright infringement, unfair competition, misappropriation and unjust enrichment, all of which were premised on the law of the State of New York, the situs of the alleged infringement. Naxos moved to dismiss for failure to state a claim, arguing that the recordings had entered the public domain in the United Kingdom and, hence, the United States as well. Capitol moved for, among other relief, partial summary judgment on liability.