6 ms·

>This sounds like terms dictated by the Mob. The simple fact is that copyright protections are far too strong. The copyright cartel doesn't need a shady networ

>This sounds like terms dictated by the Mob. The simple fact is that copyright protections are far too strong. The copyright cartel doesn't need a shady network of 400 pound men to enforce their schemes; they just use the U.S. Attorney's office instead. How many bright technical entrepreneurs have been crushed by rent-seekers milking the royalties out of a 40-year-old track? Copyright has completely lost the plot. We need to rein it in, with the awareness that this will be no small task, as it amounts to taking away a license to print money from some of the largest companies in the world.

bogomipz 9y ago
>"How many bright technical entrepreneurs have been crushed by rent-seekers milking the royalties out of a 40-year-old track?" Anything after Jan 1st of 1978 is now capped at 35 years, so these are becoming less and less See: http://www.songwriteruniverse.com/gosainkaplanrecapture123.htm http://www.songwriteruniverse.com/gosainkaplanrecapture123.h... >"Copyright has completely lost the plot." Well the copyright of the of recording is there to protect the record label's investment. They aren't going to finance a record and it's promotion if someone else can come along and also release the same recording and collect money for it. That was always the plot. That being said artists don't have to sign contracts with record labels if they don't want. With technology and the internet it is possible today more than at any point in history to successfully release and promote your music without a record label. I thought this was the great promise of platforms like Soundcloud. If an artist decides they need the marketing muscle of a record label they can license their recordings to a record label and retain the recording copyright. I really believe this is the future: See: https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2009/jan/29/recording-copyright-ownership https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2009/jan/29/reco...
- Dylan16807 9y ago
  That helps a little bit but it's not automatic and even when that's done the music is still under maximum copyright for another century.
  - bogomipz 9y ago
    Huh? There's two copyrights - the copyright for the physical recording which is now 35 years and there is the songwriter copyright which is country by country but generally 50 to 70 years. The latter favor the artists so that they can receive royalties for their lifetime. Without that the songs would fall into the public domain while they artists was likely still alive. See: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/sep/12/musicians-copyright-extension https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/sep/12/musicians-copy...
    - nitrogen 9y ago
      Without that the songs would fall into the public domain while they artists was likely still alive. That was the case for centuries. Why is that such a bad thing? And US copyright is definitely longer than 35 or 50 years -- try uploading an Elvis track to YouTube; I bet someone would notice.
      - bogomipz 9y ago
        >"That was the case for centuries. Why is that such a bad thing?" For centuries? Given that commercial recordings weren't widely available until the end of the 18th century I am not sure where you are getting this from. You are mixing different things - there is a songwriter copyright and the recording copy right. A song being in the public domain(the expire of the songwriters copyright) doesn't mean you get to use the recording however you see fit. It means you can use the song as in record the song yourself and not pay royalties to Elvis's estate or whoever actually authored the song. The terms of the recording copyright determine who owns the physical recording. Often after a number of years these can revert back to the original performer. This is known as a "reversion." Upon a reversion the original performer can then license the original recording as they please - as reissues, for inclusion on compilations etc. This is why you can't upload an Elvis song to youtube - because Elvis Presley Enterprises own the recording.
- cookiecaper 9y ago
  I actually didn't know about recapture rights, so thanks for sharing that. It is nice that such a compromise was thrown in there, though it's not clear to me that the copyright cartels would take such attempts lying down. The legislation's requirements for recapture are not only fairly involved, but there seem to be several provisions that could become the center of a protracted legal case. It's one thing to have legal rights; it's another to get people to actually comply with them, and the odds in court of a One-Hit Wonder from 1982 against a big record conglomerate don't seem too favorable, especially when the alternative is to continue collecting a royalty check. There are a lot of points of inflection for a copyright broker like a label to jump in and attempt to run down the other party's legal war chest (a technique commonly practiced by large companies). >Well the copyright of the of recording is there to protect the record label's investment. They aren't going to finance a record and it's promotion if someone else can come along and also release the same recording and collect money for it. That was always the plot. The plot is as defined in the U.S. Constitution: To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. Today, the copyright regime stifles the progress of science and useful arts by cloistering our cultural, scientific, and creative heritage into the pockets of a few big corporations for a virtually unlimited period of time (the effective goal being "forever minus one day", as Jack Valenti put it). Science and the useful arts are promoted by allowing rightsholders the opportunity to make a decent living out of their work for a while. They're not promoted by allowing rightsholders to make one popular thing in their 20s, live off royalties for the next 60 years, and then enable their posterity to be three or four generations of moochers for the remaining 60+ years left in the copyright. We want to reward work, but not so much that creative people, let alone entire generations of their offspring, are deprived of the ongoing incentive to contribute. "Necessity is the mother of invention", after all. Progress is not promoted by locking up cultural icons in impenetrable boxes. We're more concerned about a company's brand image than we are about free discourse or historical records. Progress is not promoted by raining the force of the American government down on hackers and engineers who build communication systems that make copyright difficult to enforce, or by using arcane legal mechanisms like the CFAA and the RAM Copy doctrine to prevent developers from spidering the web. I am all for allowing companies to profit, I'm a capitalist. But we need not take that narrative to its extreme and assume that we must allow corporations whatever is best for their bottom line without consideration to the larger social, cultural, and economic concerns at hand. People are creative and will find plenty of ways to cope with revised copyright laws. Remember, the primary goal of copyright is NOT to be a dollar-printing machine in the rock star's basement, but rather to promote the progress of science and useful arts, and we should structure things to ensure that is happening. Copyright as it exists now primarily functions to serve corporate profiteers. The public only accepts it because it doesn't understand how draconian it gets, since most of the time their in-the-course-of-daily-life-infringements don't result in a lawsuit. We need to fix that.
briandear 9y ago
Something is old so now you can’t own it? Does a 40 year old house suddenly become public domain just because people like to visit? If you made something, you and your heirs have a right to that, it doesn’t just get confiscated because it’s popular. Some of Bob Dylan’s songs are over 50 years old; does that mean he shouldn’t own the stuff he created? That is just theft. Nobody has a “right” to anything I create unless I say so.
- cookiecaper 9y ago
  That is not how intellectual goods work. They require their own class of property laws called "intellectual property" precisely because they are different from real property. Real property provides the basic needs of human life, and any single parcel or space can only be occupied or used by a single entity at a time. It exists in time and space as a physical good. Persons and families are entitled to protect this property, with force if necessary, because they depend on it for their ongoing maintenance and habitation. Real property laws provide structure to our approach to real property so that we can live in a neighborly civilization instead of a smattering of independent militarized tribes. Intellectual property, on the other hand, exists in an abstract, non-physical space. The same intellectual content can exist with perfect fidelity in an unlimited number of minds, and because intellectual goods are not subject to physical laws of space and time, they can be shared and utilized fully and simultaneously by everyone capable of processing and storing them. This free-flowing nature makes intellectual goods extremely powerful, but it also gives them limited economic utility, because the supply is very hard to constrain. This was true in the past, and it's 1000x truer with the advent of the internet, which allows us to transfer intellectual goods practically anywhere in the world perfectly, exactly, and instantaneously. Now you don't even need to stay on good terms with the neighborhood sage for access to the treasure trove of intellectual goods! Disembodied intellectual goods are useful, but they are not necessary for survival, and thus it is rarely if ever justified to use force in the "defense" of them. This is very different from real property, which must be reserved and defended to ensure survival. To the extent that we do decide to use force to "defend" such goods, we should tread lightly. The analog to real property is very weak indeed. Copyright essentially injects the government as a middleman into a voluntary and free market transaction, and says "I know you THINK you want that, but we aren't going to allow you to buy it from him, because we say someone else deserves the money more than him". Such interjections are another area where we should tread very lightly, and in recent decades, we have done anything but. Our current iteration of copyright-gone-amok constrains our speech and does a great deal of damage that no one with an audience is willing to talk about, because they're all too busy enjoying the money stream from it to comment on its destructive consequences.
flycaliguy 9y ago
Can you actually tell me about a bright technical entrepreneur who has been crushed? Why did they form a business distributing somebody else's product if they couldn't pay for it?

bogomipz 9y ago

>"How many bright technical entrepreneurs have been crushed by rent-seekers milking the royalties out of a 40-year-old track?" Anything after Jan 1st of 1978 is now capped at 35 years, so these are becoming less and less See: http://www.songwriteruniverse.com/gosainkaplanrecapture123.htm http://www.songwriteruniverse.com/gosainkaplanrecapture123.h... >"Copyright has completely lost the plot." Well the copyright of the of recording is there to protect the record label's investment. They aren't going to finance a record and it's promotion if someone else can come along and also release the same recording and collect money for it. That was always the plot. That being said artists don't have to sign contracts with record labels if they don't want. With technology and the internet it is possible today more than at any point in history to successfully release and promote your music without a record label. I thought this was the great promise of platforms like Soundcloud. If an artist decides they need the marketing muscle of a record label they can license their recordings to a record label and retain the recording copyright. I really believe this is the future: See: https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2009/jan/29/recording-copyright-ownership https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2009/jan/29/reco...

Dylan16807 9y ago
That helps a little bit but it's not automatic and even when that's done the music is still under maximum copyright for another century.
- bogomipz 9y ago
  Huh? There's two copyrights - the copyright for the physical recording which is now 35 years and there is the songwriter copyright which is country by country but generally 50 to 70 years. The latter favor the artists so that they can receive royalties for their lifetime. Without that the songs would fall into the public domain while they artists was likely still alive. See: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/sep/12/musicians-copyright-extension https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/sep/12/musicians-copy...
  - nitrogen 9y ago
    Without that the songs would fall into the public domain while they artists was likely still alive. That was the case for centuries. Why is that such a bad thing? And US copyright is definitely longer than 35 or 50 years -- try uploading an Elvis track to YouTube; I bet someone would notice.
    - bogomipz 9y ago
      >"That was the case for centuries. Why is that such a bad thing?" For centuries? Given that commercial recordings weren't widely available until the end of the 18th century I am not sure where you are getting this from. You are mixing different things - there is a songwriter copyright and the recording copy right. A song being in the public domain(the expire of the songwriters copyright) doesn't mean you get to use the recording however you see fit. It means you can use the song as in record the song yourself and not pay royalties to Elvis's estate or whoever actually authored the song. The terms of the recording copyright determine who owns the physical recording. Often after a number of years these can revert back to the original performer. This is known as a "reversion." Upon a reversion the original performer can then license the original recording as they please - as reissues, for inclusion on compilations etc. This is why you can't upload an Elvis song to youtube - because Elvis Presley Enterprises own the recording.
cookiecaper 9y ago
I actually didn't know about recapture rights, so thanks for sharing that. It is nice that such a compromise was thrown in there, though it's not clear to me that the copyright cartels would take such attempts lying down. The legislation's requirements for recapture are not only fairly involved, but there seem to be several provisions that could become the center of a protracted legal case. It's one thing to have legal rights; it's another to get people to actually comply with them, and the odds in court of a One-Hit Wonder from 1982 against a big record conglomerate don't seem too favorable, especially when the alternative is to continue collecting a royalty check. There are a lot of points of inflection for a copyright broker like a label to jump in and attempt to run down the other party's legal war chest (a technique commonly practiced by large companies). >Well the copyright of the of recording is there to protect the record label's investment. They aren't going to finance a record and it's promotion if someone else can come along and also release the same recording and collect money for it. That was always the plot. The plot is as defined in the U.S. Constitution: To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. Today, the copyright regime stifles the progress of science and useful arts by cloistering our cultural, scientific, and creative heritage into the pockets of a few big corporations for a virtually unlimited period of time (the effective goal being "forever minus one day", as Jack Valenti put it). Science and the useful arts are promoted by allowing rightsholders the opportunity to make a decent living out of their work for a while. They're not promoted by allowing rightsholders to make one popular thing in their 20s, live off royalties for the next 60 years, and then enable their posterity to be three or four generations of moochers for the remaining 60+ years left in the copyright. We want to reward work, but not so much that creative people, let alone entire generations of their offspring, are deprived of the ongoing incentive to contribute. "Necessity is the mother of invention", after all. Progress is not promoted by locking up cultural icons in impenetrable boxes. We're more concerned about a company's brand image than we are about free discourse or historical records. Progress is not promoted by raining the force of the American government down on hackers and engineers who build communication systems that make copyright difficult to enforce, or by using arcane legal mechanisms like the CFAA and the RAM Copy doctrine to prevent developers from spidering the web. I am all for allowing companies to profit, I'm a capitalist. But we need not take that narrative to its extreme and assume that we must allow corporations whatever is best for their bottom line without consideration to the larger social, cultural, and economic concerns at hand. People are creative and will find plenty of ways to cope with revised copyright laws. Remember, the primary goal of copyright is NOT to be a dollar-printing machine in the rock star's basement, but rather to promote the progress of science and useful arts, and we should structure things to ensure that is happening. Copyright as it exists now primarily functions to serve corporate profiteers. The public only accepts it because it doesn't understand how draconian it gets, since most of the time their in-the-course-of-daily-life-infringements don't result in a lawsuit. We need to fix that.

briandear 9y ago

Something is old so now you can’t own it? Does a 40 year old house suddenly become public domain just because people like to visit? If you made something, you and your heirs have a right to that, it doesn’t just get confiscated because it’s popular. Some of Bob Dylan’s songs are over 50 years old; does that mean he shouldn’t own the stuff he created? That is just theft. Nobody has a “right” to anything I create unless I say so.

cookiecaper 9y ago
That is not how intellectual goods work. They require their own class of property laws called "intellectual property" precisely because they are different from real property. Real property provides the basic needs of human life, and any single parcel or space can only be occupied or used by a single entity at a time. It exists in time and space as a physical good. Persons and families are entitled to protect this property, with force if necessary, because they depend on it for their ongoing maintenance and habitation. Real property laws provide structure to our approach to real property so that we can live in a neighborly civilization instead of a smattering of independent militarized tribes. Intellectual property, on the other hand, exists in an abstract, non-physical space. The same intellectual content can exist with perfect fidelity in an unlimited number of minds, and because intellectual goods are not subject to physical laws of space and time, they can be shared and utilized fully and simultaneously by everyone capable of processing and storing them. This free-flowing nature makes intellectual goods extremely powerful, but it also gives them limited economic utility, because the supply is very hard to constrain. This was true in the past, and it's 1000x truer with the advent of the internet, which allows us to transfer intellectual goods practically anywhere in the world perfectly, exactly, and instantaneously. Now you don't even need to stay on good terms with the neighborhood sage for access to the treasure trove of intellectual goods! Disembodied intellectual goods are useful, but they are not necessary for survival, and thus it is rarely if ever justified to use force in the "defense" of them. This is very different from real property, which must be reserved and defended to ensure survival. To the extent that we do decide to use force to "defend" such goods, we should tread lightly. The analog to real property is very weak indeed. Copyright essentially injects the government as a middleman into a voluntary and free market transaction, and says "I know you THINK you want that, but we aren't going to allow you to buy it from him, because we say someone else deserves the money more than him". Such interjections are another area where we should tread very lightly, and in recent decades, we have done anything but. Our current iteration of copyright-gone-amok constrains our speech and does a great deal of damage that no one with an audience is willing to talk about, because they're all too busy enjoying the money stream from it to comment on its destructive consequences.

flycaliguy 9y ago

Can you actually tell me about a bright technical entrepreneur who has been crushed? Why did they form a business distributing somebody else's product if they couldn't pay for it?