Dead Musicians Signing Media Rights Petitions 357
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?'"
Re:Advertising Standard Authority (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/how_to_complain/complai
If anyone knows the page number, or better, even has a copy of the ad then that would be really god.
Re:Copyright should permanently belong to the auth (Score:5, Informative)
Copyright law is there explicitly because the legal system recognize that there is no such thing as "intellectual property". I.e. copyright law is needed because "intellectual property" isn't property, and as a result, copying an idea or expression of that idea isn't theft.
Yes, I know the RIAA wants you to think it is, but it isn't. Copying without permission is copyright infringement, not theft.
The difference being that copyright in modern legal systems is explicitly there to give a temporary monopoly to a creator of a work to promote the advances of the arts and science by granting a (time) limited set of rights that you as a creator would not otherwise have.
Copyright is in any case a "recent" legal construction - it's original intent was to enrich people friendly to the British Crown by handing out artificial monopolies, and now we see corporations trying to move copyright back to that from it's more recent goal of promoting the arts and sciences.
I'd also like to point out that most great art through history was made without any form of copyright protection at all. Artists still created works, and still made a living, in much the same way as all but a tiny minority of the most successfull make most of their money now: By selling originals to wealthy patrons or by performing.
Sign ORG's petition in response (Score:3, Informative)
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?
Re:Remember, this is not just about the Royalties. (Score:3, Informative)
This little group plays a game of mentioning their "real" meaning within quotes, and then disagreeing with it. They assume that because they normally get modded down, that they MUST have something insightful to say, so they are trying to cheat the mod system. Read it, and you'll see. It's his own blog.