UK Copyright Extension in Exchange for Censorship?

Awel writes "The UK opposition leader, David Cameron, says in a speech to the British Phonographic Industry that his party would work to extend the copyright term to 70 years and crack down on piracy. But in return, labels would have to agree to bear more 'social responsibility', which appears to translate into avoiding lyrics that glorify 'an anti-learning culture, truancy, knifes, violence, guns, misogyny'. He doesn't spell out how this would be achieved in practice. This follows the publication in December of a UK government report recommending that the standard copyright term in Europe remain at 50 years (and not be raised to 70 or 95 years)."

Historic precedent

[Simon80]

Looks like copyright is returning to its roots..

What a deal.

[Rob T Firefly]

So Cameron is basically promising to do his part to make speech less free, so long as the labels promise to do their part to make speech less free? Score.

horrible situation

[Potor]

so the government decides what may hear, and the recording industry what we may listen to. great.

Nanny state

[pubjames]

Well, this puts me right off David Cameron.

What's up with the UK recently? It's bizarre. People complain like hell about the EU imposing laws on the UK, but if it is the UK gov doing it, nobody bats an eyelid.

For example, smoking. I hate smoking, it's horrid. But if people want to do it, they should be able to go to pubs where it's allowed. If people want to listen to music that glorifies "an anti-learning culture, truancy, knifes, violence, guns, misogyny" then they should be able to. And if people want to copy music or books or whatever of an artist that is well dead and buried then they should be able to do that too.

Re:Historic precedent

[SatanicPuppy]

The industry isn't seeking this--it's the government. "We'll give you this thing you really really want (extended copyrights), and in return you can do us this little favor, and censor your artists." The music industry is evil, no doubt, but they'd rather be able to sell whatever the hell they want to and own the copyrights forever...Censorship is work for them, and it will alienate artists, and art isn't something that lends itself well to censorship, so they may see actual losses coming out of it, which is the last thing they want.

So what you're really saying is, "Government is returning to its roots" and that is correct.

Re:What a deal.

[niceone]

So Cameron is basically promising to do his part to make speech less free, so long as the labels promise to do their part to make speech less free? Score.

Yeah, not free (as in speech) in exchange for not free (as in beer). Excellent.

Dangers to freedom...

[kebes]

To all the people who doubt the social relevance of the "copyright reformist" debate... here is a perfect example of why we should be concerned. Not only is there yet another push for copyright extension, but this extension is being used to bargain for government censorship too.

The irony, of course, is that one of the main problems with effectively-perpetual copyright is the many restrictions it places on open commentary and free speech. Perpetual and rigidly-enforced copyrights essentially produce a chilling effect in the domain of free public discussion. Since copyright is a government-granted monopoly, it is hard to not label this as censorship.

So we get a double-dose of censorship: copyright extensions limit our ability to freely discuss and produce derivative art of the culture we are a part of... and these same extensions are used as a lever to enforce a government-mandated version of decency. In my mind this seriously calls into question the notion that copyrights are there as a service to society, encouraging distribution of artwork to the people... or have we given up on that interpretation of copyright entirely?

Re:horrible situation

[EveryNickIsTaken]

And this differs from the current situation in what way?

Re:Nanny state

[Anonymous Coward]

For example, smoking. I hate smoking, it's horrid. But if people want to do it, they should be able to go to pubs where it's allowed. [emphasis mine]

Not any more it's not. No, if people want to do it, they should be able to do it in the privacy of their own home, where it won't endanger the lives of others. Ok, the law in question actually extends that to "outside the pub" too (probably a reasonable compromise as, even though it still stinks, the smoke will disperse more effectively).

Holy crap.

[DoofusOfDeath]

His offer is that if the recording industry will give up some of their own free-speech rights, the government will reward them by curtailing citizens' free-speech rights?

huh?

[circletimessquare]

music about "anti-learning culture, truancy, knifes, violence, guns, misogyny" is street music which, gasp, is sold on the street

by the time it gets in the hands of the kids of these fine legislators, it has been picked up by a label and redistributed. stopping that part of the process won't lead to the death of street music, it will just mean that street music will get distributed by other means

kids are stupid. they listen to stupid things. then they grow up. and become responsible. and become members of the house of commons. i wonder how many of this guys peers, if not himself, were getting stoned in the back of a car listening to "we don't need no education..." and other wonders of pink floyd's "the wall" 25 years ago

you can't stop teenagers from being retarded. that's just what teenage years are all about

hey david cameron: "How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat!"

Helmet

[Shuntros]

Fortunately the majority of British voters see Cameron for what he is; someone who'll do and say anything to get back into power. It will be a sad election that sees his greasy mug in Downing St.

That said, Brown doesn't exactly make me jump for joy either. Guess I'll carry on doing what I've done for the last 10 years, vote for apathy and stay at home.

So many mistakes...

[kebes]

The entire text of this speech makes me sick. It is full of lies and unsubstantiated claims. Here's a random assortment:

And at a time of technological revolution, you have adapted to changes in consumer behaviour with great ingenuity, launching online and mobile services.

(Emphasis mine.) Ha! That's a laughable analysis of an industry desperately trying to maintain the status quo.

First, how do we prevent the massive fraud that is carried out against your industry every day through copyright theft.

I know it's been said a million times on Slashdot, but: calling copyright infringement "theft" is imprecise (and legally at least incorrect) and is an intentional attempt to bias the debate.

And second, how do we protect your investments in the long-term by looking at the issue of copyright extension in the digital age.

"Copyright extension in the digital age." The irony! Because we live in a world where information can be transmitted very quickly, and fads come and go much more quickly, and everything is being sped up... clearly the solution is to provide temporal extensions to all present laws! ~sarcasm~

Very few people would go into a shop, lift a CD from the shelves and just walk out with it. But for some reason, many are happy to buy pirate CDs or illegally download music.

This is a classic fallacy. Rather than dwell on the obvious differences between theft of physical property and unauthorized duplication of data, I ask a question: If the people of your country are obviously treating the two activities very differently (both in practical and moral terms), shouldn't you instead search out the root cause of those differences? Perhaps the people unconsciously realize that there is a fundamental difference!

This alone has cost the music industry as much as £1.1 billion in lost retail sales since 2004.

Prove it.

We wouldn't tolerate fraud on such a massive scale in any other industry... so why is there such little will on the part of government, businesses and individuals to confront it in the music industry?

Again, maybe you should use this as a clue to the fact that those figures of "lost sales" may not be realistic? Maybe you should search out the reasons why your citizens bear very little sympathy for this industry...

Copyright matters because it is the way artists are rewarded and businesses makes its money and invests in the future. So copyright theft has to be treated like other theft.

Correction: "Copyright matters because it is one way artists can be rewarded and business may make money." (The second sentence is a non sequitur.)

If you cannot get protection from illegal activity, where is the incentive to continue innovating?

That's a very good question... and since you evidently don't know the answer, you should spend time talking to the millions of artists worldwide who release their material under a creative commons license (or implicitly allow others to access their work by posting it online freely, e.g. YouTube), and the huge community of free software coders. (Note: I agree that free software coders benefit from the legal framework of the GPL, and others benefit from the legal framework of the CC licenses... but not in the way that he is implying.)

This only covers the first 1/4 of the speech. Again, I'm disgusted by the skewed view of the entire debate that is being presented. This results from either paying little to no attention to what is going on, or an intentional misrepresentation in order to garner the favor of a particular industry. In either case, it's not a good place from which to start setting social policy.

Re:Nanny state

[pubjames]

No, if people want to do it, they should be able to do it in the privacy of their own home, where it won't endanger the lives of others.

I bet the chance of having a car accident after drinking just one pint is hundreds of times higher than the chance of you getting cancer from someone smoking near you. And sometimes people have more than one pint before driving home, don't they? And so we should ban drinking alcohol except at home.

Not too keen on that? Enjoy a drink at the pub, do you?

Re:What a deal.

[Odiumjunkie]

David Cameron almost had me starting to consider the posibility that he had actually made some headway into changing the political direction of the Tories, but no: nothing has changed. Let's pay off big businesses in exchange for more social/cultural control and censorship.

I am a writer and I object to 50 years.

[gurps_npc]

Let's be honest. 99% of the time, for a software, books, music, and movies, 95% of the profit is in over the first 5 years. After that, if you get any sales at all, they are dribles in. A slight exception is for series books, where if someone reads book #5 and likes it, they might go out and buy #1-4.

Still, that generally only pumps up your profit for an additional 5-10 years.

After 20 years on sale, your profit is practically nothing ... UNLESS you wrote a masterpiece.

But if you wrote a masterpiece then:

1. You probably got rich by then anyway.

2. The public wants you to WRITE ANOTHER ONE

3. A sequel/new book would earn a ton more money and also can pump up sales of the first thing.

Net Net, it is in the PUBLIC'S interest that after just 10 years, copyrights run out. AND it does not significantly affect any creator's income.

The real reason why we have copyright laws over 10 years is not for the writer, but instead for the major corporations that can make money lots of tiny sales 15, 20 or 50 years after creation of the author. It is pretty much ONLY them that really benefit, at the expense of society by a LOT.

Now, there is one other factor - derivative work. Movies based on books etc. That kind of thing it is reasonable to allow the original writer to retain. But honestly it should ALWAYS be the original writer, i.e. the right should not be saleable. That prevents them from selling it to a corp for a quick profit and then having the corp. massacre their work. By requirin the original actual author to give always give consent, we can increase the quality of the work.

Re:Nanny state

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Well, this puts me right off David Cameron.

As more than one pundit has noted, Tony Blair's legacy is now obvious: it is David Cameron. True to form, he started out very promising, saying lots of things we all wanted to hear, but now the spin has started to slip a lot of his policies just sound like bad ideas. (See also "grammar schools".) I wonder how long Gordy will last before falling into the same pit; surely after a decade at the heart of the previous government, he hasn't really suddenly given up on all the bad ideas he's supported over those ten years?

Incidentally, while I am in general opposed to government intervention in people's daily lives, I find the smoking ban to be something of a special case. For one thing, it is a health issue that affects those who do not choose to smoke as well. Secondly, and much less importantly but still in its favour, market forces have not produced the opportunities that non-smokers want more because of (non-)competition concerns and management short-sightedness than any economic reason, and the smoking ban will break this deadlock.

Incidentally, the pre-budget report mentioned comes from the independent Gowers Review, and the government basically just accepted almost all of the review's recommendations. If you're bothered by the influence Europe has on our country, you should really read the full Gowers report (including the parts between the lines), and note how often the review proposes one thing but implies fairly transparently that the reason they don't propose going further is that under European law we can't. For example, it sounds a lot like the Review couldn't recommend generic, US-style fair use exemptions — even though it advocates more specific changes such as a format-shifting exemption explicitly without an accompanying levy on blank media — because EU law basically prevents doing anything that broad without imposing some sort of additional charge to pay off Big Media.

How many things are wrong with this idea?

[Odiumjunkie]

> work to extend the copyright term to 70 years and crack down on piracy

Right... because the first thing to do in the fight against piracy is to broaden the definition of piracy to include twenty years worth of extra music. In other news, Cameron announced that as the first step in a crackdown on murder, the definition of "murder" will been expanded to include drunk-driving. He said that government claims that this would increase reported cases of murder by 12000% as "exagerated".

> He argued that extending the term would give an "incentive to the music industry to digitise both older and niche repertoire which
> more people can enjoy at no extra cost".

Right... so, extending the copyright term to include works which are currently in the public domain, and thus free and legal to use for any purpose will help people enjoy these works at "no extra cost"? In other news, as part of a campaign to try and get kids to exercise more, Cameron announced plans to put all public playparks into the hands of private companies that will charge for their use.

> Mr Cameron said: "Most people think these are all multimillionaires living in some penthouse flat. The reality is that many of
> these are low-earning session musicians who will be losing a vital pension."...

> ...Sir Cliff Richard, The Who and Sir Paul McCartney backed the campaign to extend the 50-year term

...enough said

Wait, what?

[Azuma Hazuki]

I don't get it...how is this an exchange? It sounds like there are two things this type of person wants, longer copyright and censorship, so why is one being offered "in exchange" for the other? The two go hand-in-hand, making it harder to distribute material and harder to produce material about what you want. This looks like a sock puppet job. Now if it was "decrease copyright term for increased censorship" or vice versa, that would be an exchange.

Re:Nanny state

[aztektum]

I thought about that argument and then I realized "Well, they could always goto a pub that doesn't allow smoking."

Just because you *feel* entitled to go out in the world and have it be a warm and fuzzy place that lives up to your every expectation and personal choice, doesn't mean you are.

If a pub owner person wants to allow smoking and attracts those clients, then they shouldn't be legally prohibited. You're more than welcome to use the one across the street that has a no smoking sign in the window.

Translation:

[superbus1929]

"We'll allow you guys to soak up even more money that you don't deserve, as long as you contribute to our Big Brother-like atmosphere!" Should I take solace that this will almost certainly get laughed off by Labour?

Re:Retroactive changes...

[kebes]

Hmmmm.... Your comment got me thinking. You describe an "implied contract" between a consumer and the corporation. I agree with that: the consumers were sold something ("here is a work... it will enter public domain in X years"), whose value is then afterwards altered ("sorry... it will now enter public domain in X+Y years!"). So the consumer is being ripped off.

But authors are, too. When I publish something and assign the copyright to the publisher (in exchange for whatever terms), it is with the knowledge that the work will enter the public domain on a given date. However if the laws are suddenly altered, then my contract has been changed without me agreeing to anything! If an additional 20 years of protection are afforded, how can those extra 20 years be included in a contract retroactively? What if I wanted the work to enter the public domain on a particular date? The original contract guaranteed that, and now the government imposes a law that invalidates the assumptions of my previous contract!

I think a consumer arguing that an implicit contract had been violated would be interesting... but I think if an author, who had assigned the copyright to another party, vocally said that they would sue to regain control of the "extended time" of any copyright extension... that might draw some much-needed publicity to this debate.

Imagine what would happen if *all* authors said they would reclaim the "extended time" from copyright extension. I bet the publishers wouldn't be so keen to support extensions in that case. Rights of the authors indeed.

Orwellian Politics

[unlametheweak]

This illustrates to me the symbiotic relationship governments and businesses have with each other in democracies. In their words it's protecting the consumer from themselves while making music more available. In the double-think tradition of Orwell this makes sense. Too bad it doesn't seem like there is a choice nowadays in democracies. You get to vote for different people, but it's all the same basic ideology; the corrupt supporting the corrupt. That is, businesses supporting politicians, and your average voter being fed the same old FUD, appeals to emotion, etc. without any De facto choice or say in the matter. The popular vote really doesn't seem to be supporting anything popular. Career politicians supporting career business people who support career politicians. It's the mobius strip of Western progress.

Profit for censorship

[wlvdc]

Economic benefits in return for social responsibility. Read: more profit if you apply (self-)censorship to ensure the restoration of Victorian values. The next step will be ofcourse to ban anything that is critical, obscene, rebellious or hurtful to the feelings of the majority. I can recall at least two other regimes from the last century that offered benefits to individuals, companies and organisations, when they would apply censorship and spy on family, friends, neighbours and employees. This is all very much in-line with recent developments in the UK. Oher examples are: many in the UK think, supported by populist politicians, press and media, that there are terrorists and child molestors on every street corner (ofcourse all non-British). Consequently, there are more and more calls to ditch human rights legislation and to cut freedom of speech, all in the name of fighting terrorism and anti-social behaviour. People get political positions through cash donations (cash for honours). Police kill innocent people and no one gets charged. Two-year old in a pram cannot enter a supermarket wearing a hoodie. Fourteen-year old girl gets arrested for chalking love signs and butterflies on a pavement. Father gets arrested for making pictures of his son playing football, not having a license. All social-economic problems here are caused by artists, scientists, immigrants, teenagers or the European Union, so they should and will be punished. The true culprits, politicians, laywers, the popular media and greedy business people walk free and get rewarded for their opportunism.

Re:Historic precedent

[mr_mischief]

I doubt they'd forget. I can see them laughing about it at parties and talking about how stupid the politicians were for handing them such an all-around win for them. They'd talk about the pledge whenever it's convenient to their purposes, and they'd ask for government help in overcoming the financial burdens of it in some way, even if they're not doing what they promised. They'd also be sure to remember this attack on the public on two fronts come election time, when the gift givers need a little extra push toward office.

The joy of government.

[robot_love]

So basically, I, the consumer, get screwed both by what he is barganing for and what he is barganing with. Wonderful.

Re:Nanny state

[drsquare]

New York City passed the law several years ago and it has been AMAZINGLY successful. It has been popular with smokers and non-smokers alike.

If it was that successful, pubs would have banned smoking themselves, to make more money. The fact that it hasn't speaks volumes.

They banned smoking in pubs in Ireland, and something like one in three pubs closed down. The same is happening in England, with many semi-rural pubs turning into restaurants. Eventually all there'll be left is trendy inner-city wine bars, and another great tradition will be lost to the politically-correct brigade.

Unfortuanately in modern Britain, all the major parties are control freaks, and the minor parties are all nazis and communists, so there's no-one to vote for. And they wonder why voting turnouts are so low...