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If we do create new disruptive companies in the music industry, can we start by not owning the copyrights of the artists? I'd like to see this as a change in th

If we do create new disruptive companies in the music industry, can we start by not owning the copyrights of the artists? I'd like to see this as a change in the copyright law, but that's probably impossible to do at this stage, so the next best thing would be a bottom-up movement to give back copyright ownership to the artists. Corporations owning the copyrights have created this terrible incentive for them to try to extend the copyright perpetually every 20 years. I'd like to see the copyright terms be reduced to the original 14 years, too, but I'm not sure that's possible without changing the copyright laws first. So let the artists themselves keep the copyright, and your label only gets to "license" those copyrights for the whole period of the contract, so you can promote and sell their music. You should also give them like 70% of the revenues, or more if possible. All these should be competitive advantages over the big labels.

joshuamerrill 15y ago
To be precise, the record labels do not own the copyrights to the songs, but rather to the specific recordings produced under contract with the artist. The rights to the song are held by the music publisher, which is often a different entity.
anamax 15y ago
> I'd like to see the copyright terms be reduced to the original 14 years, too, but I'm not sure that's possible without changing the copyright laws first. The duration of copyright is defined by copyright law, so yes, reducing the length to 14 years will require a change to copyright law. I think that Lessig had a more politically viable solution - you can have a long time but you have to pay a nominal fee every so often. For example, you can have 100 years, but you have to pay $1 per work at 20, 40, 60, and 80 years (not Lessig's exact proposal). Note that this also addresses the "who owns it" and "what is protected" issues. We might see it as a revenue proposal though.

joshuamerrill 15y ago

To be precise, the record labels do not own the copyrights to the songs, but rather to the specific recordings produced under contract with the artist. The rights to the song are held by the music publisher, which is often a different entity.

anamax 15y ago

> I'd like to see the copyright terms be reduced to the original 14 years, too, but I'm not sure that's possible without changing the copyright laws first. The duration of copyright is defined by copyright law, so yes, reducing the length to 14 years will require a change to copyright law. I think that Lessig had a more politically viable solution - you can have a long time but you have to pay a nominal fee every so often. For example, you can have 100 years, but you have to pay $1 per work at 20, 40, 60, and 80 years (not Lessig's exact proposal). Note that this also addresses the "who owns it" and "what is protected" issues. We might see it as a revenue proposal though.