20-Year Copyright Extensions Coming To Europe 268
unlametheweak points out a story at Ars Technica which begins:
"After a UK government-led commission said that the current 50-year term for musical copyrights was fine, and the government last year publicly agreed that there was no need to extend the term, culture minister Andy Burnham yesterday made the logical follow-up announcement that yes, the government would now push for a 20-year extension on copyright. Turns out, it's the moral thing to do. Actually, by framing the issue as a 'moral case,' Burnham gets to sidestep the entire issue of logic. Critics have already begun to charge that he is ignoring actual evidence and the well-regarded conclusions of the Gowers Report (PDF), not to mention previous government policy. But when the issue becomes a moral one and the livelihood of aging performers is at stake, it's suddenly easier to avoid cost/benefit analysis."
Petition here (Score:3, Informative)
For all the good it might do:
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/NoTermExtension/
Re:Petition here (Score:3, Informative)
For all the good it might do:
[number10.gov.uk]http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/NoTermExtension/ [number10.gov.uk]
Thanks for the info. (Works for anyone in the UK)
Re:I don't get it... (Score:5, Informative)
Sigh. Starting at paragraph 6, halfway down the page: "In any event, a push for term extension is being made across Europe. While the UK says it will work to extend musical copyright from 50 to 70 years, the European Union is considering a plan (backed by Commissioner Charlie McCreevy) to extend musical copyrights to 95 years."
DRM (Score:2, Informative)
In another 5-10 years, all new works will be protected by encryption. The DMCA makes it illegal to bypass any copyright protection measures, and does not state that it's ok to bypass such measures after 50, 70 or 100 years. Therefore, after 100 years it will still be illegal to bypass the measure, regardless of whether the copyright itself has expired.
The poor artist is not the issue here, or the reason for extending the period. Before anyone will publish your work, most authors are required to sign over their copyright to the publisher. All of these rights are owned by the publishers, not the artists. It's that business which is being protected by laws such as DMCA.
In answer to a previous poster/programmer about him not getting paid royalties for his code, he got paid a salary in return for the copyright to the code. The code and copyright to it does not belong to him, but to the company he worked for. This is in fact similar to the case of the modern artist/publisher relationship.
Copyright, as it used to be 50 years ago when authors or artists retained ownership, hardly exists anymore.
This 'extension' is a red herring. If they made the period only 5 years after the death of an artist instead of 70 years, the DMCA would still protect the copyrighted work in perpetuity. Publishers would still be able to sell these works and be protected from other people selling the same work, as they would be held liable for breach of the DMCA, not copyright!
We should be more concerned about the imposed & implied loss of fair use rights, such as the ability to freely use copyrighted works in education, research etc.
Re:Melancholy Elephants (Score:3, Informative)
Jurassic Park, E.T., and Star Wars Episodes I, III and IV. Meesa think your argument not holding water.
Oh yes, people watched these movies for the deep seeded moral of the story, not the action or special effects...
But they you're quoting in an immitation of Jar Jar means you're too far gone to get it.
Contact Him! (Score:3, Informative)
Email him. Linky [andyburnham.org]
Re:I don't get it... (Score:3, Informative)
Hey, hey, Russians are not alcoholics. The Finns are, the Russkies are commies!
Don't you younguns learn anything in school these days?
Re:I want guaranteed 'easy life', too! (Score:3, Informative)
The problem with your argument is that it is about as sensible to give authors long copyrights in lieu of pensions as it would be to give them lottery tickets. Most copyrighted works have no copyright-related economic value. Of the small number that do have value, most only have value within a short time of publication in a given medium (anywhere from hours to years, usually 12-18 months) before they too lose nearly all of their copyright-related value. Only a teeny tiny fraction of works have long-lasting economic value, and in almost all cases where that occurs, the work is quite valuable from the get-go.
Consider a movie: it makes a lot the first weekend it comes out in theaters, but receipts go down each week until it is finally replaced by something new. In time, it goes to pay-per-view, home video, subscription cable tv, broadcast tv, etc. Each time, it makes most of the money it will ever make up front, with diminishing returns thereafter. Eventually, there's no more new media to publish it in, or at least not where it's worthwhile (people who bought a movie on DVD don't seem enthusiastic about buying it again on Bluray), and it falls entirely out of print.
So copyrights are useless as a substitute for pensions; most authors will wind up with no new money coming in in their old age. The handful that do, aside from being on par with lottery winners for luck, have probably already made a lot of money, and thus have little need for more (unless they've squandered it, in which case I have little sympathy).
If you actually cared about authors' old age funds, not to mention the widows and orphans that are oft-invoked, you would not dare to suggest that copyright extensions are a solution, when they clearly are not. The only people that are helped are the holders of the teeny tiny handful of copyrights that have long term value, and frankly, those people, with few exceptions, have been raking in enough cash since the work was published that we don't really need to concern ourselves with how they'll get by in their dotage; they're already set, or at least have had every opportunity to be.
If you're worried about elderly authors living in poverty, then an infinitely better idea would be to encourage authors to save and invest wisely in their youth and middle age, to not make bad deals, to get insured to provide for themselves or their family in case of calamity, and for the government to provide social welfare for anyone in need of it, whether they are an author or not. This is much fairer, since everyone should do this, and thus the benefit is to all of society, and not a tiny special interest, and further, it actually can succeed, where your suggestions are doomed to fail at achieving your stated goal from the very start. I suppose you might be lying, and invoking the image of an old, poor author dying in a gutter in order to further stuff the pockets of the already-rich (or once-rich wastrels), but then that would really make me upset.
Mod previous post down (Score:4, Informative)
Please read and attempt to understand:
IT'S ABOUT RIGHTS TO PAYMENTS FOR THE USE OF EXISTING RECORDINGS.
Recordings. Not songwriter copyrights.
So your example is crap. The case simply doesn't apply to it. If your hypothetical struggling musician accidentally sold the rights to their hit song fifty years ago, and was hoping that the song would now go public domain, and is against this extension for the reasons that you gave, then the musician is an idiot, because,
Re:DRM (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, the DMCA does not make it illegal to bypass technological protection measures on works NOT protected under Title 17.
Sorry to disappoint, but take a look at what James Boyle, an expert in intellectual property law, says on the subject in His Book [thepublicdomain.org] It's true- the DMCA makes old copyright law, and the span of years, largely irrelevant.