EU Proposes Retroactive Copyright Extension 514
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy has unveiled a plan to retroactively extend musical copyrights by 45 years, which would make EU musical copyrights last 95 years total. Why? They're worried that musicians won't continue to collect royalties when they retire and this will give them an additional 45 years during which they won't have to produce any new music. Perhaps the only good point is that the retroactive extensions won't take effect for any works which aren't marketed in the first year after the extension. Additionally, while there are many non-musical retirees wishing they could get paid for 95 years after they finish working, McCreevy has not announced any new plans to help them."
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Re:What's different from physical property though? (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, actually there are heaps of people who objected to the fencing off of common land, and now there are heaps of people who object to inheritance. I can't think of any good reasons for inheritance beyond a certain amount, and I fully support the community "inheriting" anything beyond that certain amount.
(In the present shitty system that would amount to what is sometimes called a "death tax", but it isn't a tax, because the dead stop being taxed when they die. Just like the dead stop having rights when they die.)
There have been some discussions of property and inheritance over at RevLeft.com
http://www.revleft.com/vb/inheritance-t34696/index.html [revleft.com]
(Someone made a really good point in that thread, "There are [no arguments for inheritance]. Anyone who agrees with inheritance should also agree with reperations. After all, the slaves did work hard and their descendants should inherit money from the children whose white anscestors neglected to pay them."
http://www.revleft.com/vb/emergence-hereditary-upper-t46268/index.html [revleft.com]
http://www.revleft.com/vb/defending-usage-conception-t51371/index.html [revleft.com]
Re:What happens when its the Penguins turn? (Score:4, Informative)
Sure. If someone wants to use a suddenly public-domain Linux 0.1, they can go right ahead. The current version will still be under copyright and available only under the terms of the GPL. Oh, and the Linux name is trademarked, not copyrighted, so Linus and his successors retain that indefinitely.
Re:What's different from physical property though? (Score:5, Informative)
In other words, even if the land is just sitting there, you still get taxed on it. If you don't pay the tax, the government seizes the property and sells it off to someone who will. Remember, this is completely apart from the income tax applied to any revenue you generate from the property, whether it's from building a house and renting it out, farming it, grazing animals on it, or paving it over and charging people to park on it.
There is no double standard because intellectual "property" isn't real property. There's a lot of impetus to treat it that way because there are a lot of business models built on being able to buy, sell, rent, and re-exploit movies, music, and writing, completely ignoring the fact that:
1. While they like to treat it as real property, real property doesn't expire after a set period of time. Anyone stupid enough to build a business model assuming an asset that is supposed to become free after a set period of time is going to retain value forever deserves to lose their investment.
2. The ability to control the property exclusively is a monopoly (generally a bad thing) granted by the government, as a trade off - we give you a monopoly for the time being, in exchange for you making the property available to the public, and ultimately part of the public domain when the monopoly ends.
3. Traditionally, there was no such thing as "intellectual property". If you saw some something cool and wanted your own copy, you'd copy it or hire someone to make you a copy. If you heard a great story, you'd retell it. This is why guilds formed - to protect "guild secrets", and create a competitive advantage for guild members. The problem is, anyone who was really innovative would more often than not, refuse to share their new process, forcing other people to have to rediscover the secret, a horrible waste of time and energy. To get rid of this waste, promote innovation, and enable those innovations to become public so that they're not lost, the idea of patents and copyrights was born.
4. Patents and copyrights are used today to print money, quash innovation by other people, and bribe politicians to extend monopolies (generally a bad thing) indefinitely, at the expense of the public. Because they don't have to pay property tax, they can sit indefinitely on IP and just sue anyone who starts making money on something that does or might infringe on it. You should either get a limited monopoly to exploit your work, or if you want to hold onto it forever, you should be required to pay property taxes on it as a royalty to the public who are guaranteeing your monopoly. Consider all the governmental resources that have been diverted by private parties to enforcing ever longer copyrights in court, and on the streets.
So to answer your question, there's a huge difference between how IP and real property are treated. There is no double standard. The fact that you think there is one is a strong indication of how badly the public has been misled about how copyrights and patents are supposed to work.
Re:Who really gets paid? (Score:5, Informative)
Okay Muscians actually do get paid and this isn't about record companies. This is the poor sap playing his ass off.
Read this [negativland.com] and this [salon.com]. Thank you.
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Different slant (Score:4, Informative)
In summary, this is not about the songs but the performers themselves.See here [theregister.co.uk], here [europa.eu] and here [europa.eu]
Re:Undeserved (Score:5, Informative)
The whole point of copyright is to encourage the creative arts. Retroactively extending copyright creates nothing. We get no new works for it.
The whole point of copyright was to encourage the creative arts. Now it is all about Asia. Asia is a huge emerging market for the EU and the US. Extending intellectual property is a reaction to the new wealth found in that region.
The US and the EU cannot compete with the now-strong manufacturing base of Asia. The only thing we can sell to that region is Mickey Mouse (copyright), Coca Cola (trademark), and Boeing (patents).
Asia does not need the US or the EU to create any of those products. So if they do, we want them to "license the rights" from us.
Re:The Plan! (Score:4, Informative)
Happy Birthday is indeed not a folk song, it is a ripoff of Good Morning To You, which was written by the Hill sisters in the 19th century. The Hills then used copyright law to claim ownership of Happy Birthday, and the copyrights are now in fact owned by Time Warner.
http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/birthday.asp [snopes.com]
Re:Who really gets paid? (Score:3, Informative)
Because if you take my car, I won't be able to use it. I will have been harmed by your actions. Harming people is bad.
It's more than just that - the mere act of driving a car causes wear and tear on it, shortening its remaining useful life and decreasing its value (although that decreases over time whether you drive it or not, of course).
On the other hand, if you copy my song/program/movie, I won't have been harmed: I'll still have everything I had before you made that copy.
You have everything physical, but you no longer have the opportunity to attempt to profit from your work by charging me for a copy of that work. That's not the same as depriving you access to a physical item, but it is at least a notional, potential loss. (Or rather, loss of potential)
It's not black and white, of course, because not everyone who copies your stuff would have paid for it if they couldn't copy it, there's the advertising aspect, etc. However I don't believe that it's as cut and dried as a lot of people here try to make out.
Re:Mod parent up. (Score:1, Informative)
No. Just someone making a deliciously ironic double-point by both violating copyright and removing attribution to the author (John Dvorak, as you noticed while the earlier responders humorously failed to).
Re:Who really gets paid? (Score:3, Informative)
I think the attribution area is normally covered under concepts like plagiarism. If I take your book (even if it was in the Public Domain), slap my name on the cover, and try to pass it off as my own work, then that's plagiarism. If I take your book (not in the Public Domain) and make copies to distribute at the nearest street corner (without your permission), that's copyright infringement.
I'm in favor of returning copyright to the terms originally set by the Founding Fathers. Copyright owners would get 14 years of copyright protection. After that, they could opt in for a single 14 year copyright extension. I'd be willing to compromise by phasing in the changes (like I posted here http://www.jasons-toolbox.com/?p=119 [jasons-toolbox.com] ), but beyond that I don't see why a creator's great-grandchildren should financially benefit from a work that was created when they (the great-grandchildren) weren't even around. How is giving royalties to an author past his death giving him the incentive to create more works? Are we to expect a string of zombie authors will rise up if only copyright is extended a little bit more?
Re:Who really gets paid? (Score:5, Informative)
Work is intermittent (Jon Pertwee used to say actors spend 95% of their time unemployed)
Then that means they can simultaneously work other jobs 95% of the time instead of sleeping, sitting on their asses, or partying. Only the most successful richest artists are going to have people still interested in their music decades later. This is pure welfare for the richest musicians, musicians that live in mansions, ride around in limousines, and snort and fuck everything that moves.
A very good idea (Score:3, Informative)
A very interesting proposal. I like the way you've balanced it so artists can make a living for a period of time, but to make a lifetime career of it, they would have to keep on producing. The 10-15 year timeframe sounds about right because it can take a decade to really introduce a new work of art to the world. We can get things published much more quickly now, but individual people's capacity for change hasn't improved at the same pace. It still takes a long time for things to be really widely adopted.
I would consider the provision for permanent attribution to be just good manners among fellow artists. For example, I am a hymn writer, and often use texts from hundreds of years ago. I frequently need to alter them a bit to fit our modern ears, and always attribute the original author along with a note about my alteration.
Protection for sound recordings, not works (Score:1, Informative)
I haven't seen this point mentioned, so I think I should point out this:
This planned extension of copyright terms won't affect the musical works themselves (lyrics, melodies, ...) but sound recordings of these works. This means the copyright for a certain composition will still last until 70 years after the death of its creator, while the recording itself (e.g. as a track on a CD or a video of a public performance) will be copyrighted for 95 years.
Knowing the MAFIAA, I somehow doubt that a significant portion of these recordings are copyrighted by the artists themselves, but probably by a RIAA member company.