How Copyright Makes Books and Music Disappear 128
An anonymous reader writes "A new study of books and music for sale on Amazon shows how copyright makes works disappear. The research is described in the abstract: 'A random sample of new books for sale on Amazon.com shows three times more books initially published in the 1850's are for sale than new books from the 1950's. Why? A sample of 2300 new books for sale on Amazon.com is analyzed along with a random sample of 2000 songs available on new DVDs. Copyright status correlates highly with absence from the Amazon shelf. Second, the availability on YouTube of songs that reached number one on the U.S., French, and Brazilian pop charts from 1930-60 is analyzed in terms of the identity of the uploader, type of upload, number of views, date of upload, and monetization status. An analysis of the data demonstrates that the DMCA safe harbor system as applied to YouTube helps maintain some level of access to old songs by allowing those possessing copies (primarily infringers) to communicate relatively costlessly with copyright owners to satisfy the market of potential listeners.'"
Infringer? (Score:4, Insightful)
I hold lots of "copies" (I rather would call them originals) of old songs.
Holding them makes me not an infringer.
Uploading them to youtube does!
Also I don't feel the need to add a screensaver to an old song and upload that to a MOVIE SITE.
Alternatively..... (Score:2, Insightful)
The ability to rapidly consume books and music using the internet contributes to shitty efforts being pushed out of the market at an proportionally
rapid rate.
Re:Infringer? (Score:5, Insightful)
But that's exactly how I've discovered so many artists (many of whom have been playing for years) that I enjoy to this day. Yes, it's just a stupid screensaver, for all intents and purposes, but it exposed me to something I can enjoy. I went out and searched for it. Bought the thing. Play it at home and at work. All thanks to a screensaver.
This really boils down to what exactly "holding" means in the digital age of intangible property. Music (and text, by and large) is as intangible as the emotions they illicit. So what does "holding" mean? And how does this death-grip affect future triggers of emotion?
but of course (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Infringer? (Score:4, Insightful)
Like many things their needs to be the correct balance.
We need Patients and Copyrights however they need to be sure that they they are fare enough for the content creators to get their due for their work, but not so restrictive that it restricts innovation and free speech.
I've been trying to get permission for 10 years.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Tell me about it. I have been trying fruitlessly for over ten years to find someone capable of giving me permission to post a chapter of a 1955 novel, The Gadget Maker, by one Maxwell Griffith. It has not been reprinted since a 1956 paperback. It very obviously has no commercial value left in it. But if you happen to be an MIT alumnus, you would be fascinated to read the chapter describing the protagonist's years at MIT during the 1940s. It's a wonderful picture of a milieu--and it's not as if there were all that many novels set on the MIT campus! (The protagonist applies for admission to the aeronautical engineering program, interviews with the department head, expecting to be asked why he loves aeronautics--and finds that the department head's only real concern is to make sure that he isn't Jewish).
It's under copyright. The copyright was properly renewed in 1982. It has been a long, difficult journey--publishers basically do not take any responsibility for anything about old books, and the novel was published by Lippincott, which was taken over by medical-book publisher William & Wilkins, which acquired all Lippincott's medical books claims to have no records of Lippincott's fiction. No record at the Author's Guild, no leads through the MIT Alumni Association. Where the story stands at the moment is that I put up a sort of shout-out on my website, and Maxwell Griffith's son contacted me--and said he thought it was OK but that he needed to check with his two sisters. That was over a year ago and I've heard nothing... I've just emailed him again and perhaps there will finally be a resolution.
It's a perfect example of a cultural loss. There are thousands of books out there that are of intense interest to a few hundred people, or more, that under the old copyright laws would have been long out of copyright, but now are locked up--and you cannot find the person with the key. Thousands of books of cultural but no commercial value are being sacrificed in order to protect a tiny handful that are still worth big money.
Works against music, too (Score:5, Insightful)
I do a bit of small-time music arranging, for choirs and so forth. I can't legitimately make publicly available any of that work for others to use if the original subject is still under copyright, even if I don't get (or don't want) any personal compensation and even though any performance would still result in the original copyright holder getting any appropriate revenue via one of the collection bodies.
If you look through the published music, other than classical music (and even there you really need to find old editions to be safe - there may be no copyright on Mozart but there sure is copyright on the "edited" notation), available to amateur music groups you'll find a lot of folk tunes and a relatively small selection of more modern standards that are sufficiently popular to justify the effort of licensing. There's a whole load of neglected older music that deserves a wider airing but isn't going to get it - it could become popular by being shared and consequently have value, but in the absence of sharing will be unheard and valueless.