Another Expansion of Copyright
act.eff.org
act.eff.org
This would have a huge impact on remixers, hip hop beat track artists, original music creators, and people who cover old standards.
The way it is now, it's difficult enough for creative people to use the music that falls under free use as it is.
For example, an animator used Annette Henshaw recordings from the 20s that were no longer under US Copyright, and spent over 9,000 hours creating animation that synced up to the music, only to still end up in a copyright battle over the recordings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sita_Sings_the_Blues#Copyright...
Check out the movie, it's pretty fab, https://archive.org/details/Sita_Sings_the_Blues , but would it exist under the new CLASSICS act? I doubt it.
Youtube already removes ad revenue/or the music for videos that use some recordings of music from the 30s and 40s using the Content ID system of ownership (not copyright).
and that doesn't even cover how passing this act would affect companies, artists, people who've been using these works as the basis of their work for years.
Will they have to get multiple retroactive mechanical licenses? https://www.harryfox.com/license_music/what_is_mechanical_li...
Or will the record companies just claim their works/revenue from the works?
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/282...
I would hope you recognize the opposite. The natural inclination is to increase aggression to try again when battles are fought viciously and lost. The idea of losing as commonplace and safe is not reinforced enough. While I don't trust a single representative (very bad sign), I also don't think the arguments should be full of frothing.
Watch a debate in the British Parliament and then watch a U.S. Senate hearing. It's difficult to take the U.S. Senate or House seriously because there is so little frothing. It's docile, servile, and subservient, and their master is the dollar.
In self-rule, ultimately the buck stops with the citizens. Not only voters, but all of the citizens. The state of affairs is due to the combined effect of action and inaction. The blame ultimately rests with them, same as the buck rests with the shareholders of a company.
This sort of rhetoric, specifically has hurt democratic culture. If something you dislike happens, it's because you didn't do ENOUGH instead of the intended realization that everything is impermanent and open to revision.
I don't know enough about how the Senate interacts with the news media to determine if that's unusual or not, but it sure seems weird to me. If you're going to propose legislation with such a broad impact, why not speak up about it? This is something that a lot of folks want to talk about.
That's one of the most confusing double-negatives I ever saw. Could you please clarify what you meant here?
His top campaign contributions come from lawyers[0]. What kind of layers you ask? They do IP law[1]. BTW it possible I am missing something, this came from 5 minutes of google'ing. But the simplest solution is the most likely one IMO.
[0]https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/summary?cid=...
[1] https://www.youngconaway.com/ (scroll to the 'Our Practice' section)
So no.
But yeah this has nothing to do with Steamboat Willie expiring
It seems that the EFF position is "we want free music", and does absolutely nothing to address culture and access to culture.
20 years at most IMO, anything longer damages cultural progress.
Copyright is nothing like a natural right, so it's not really the EFF's place to make a convincing argument against it, more the proponents should be convincing the public to extend this favour.
It would be great IMO to link renewal to revenue, but too difficult in practice (and too many potential loopholes).
One problem with early, high cost, renewal fees is that companies know they can wait out an individual; you're not going to pay a £M renewal without already having done serious revenue.
It can take a long time to get a new technology, or a new book, or whatever, to market -- the IPR system needs to enable individual creators.
Charge proportional to declared value, with the declared value also an offer to accept payment from any combination of parties to buy the work into the public domain at that price. (It's not exactly based on revenue, but based on value to the copyright holder, but that's close enough to the same thing.)
* If you're creating something for the first time e.g. a small indie game, you need to know before you release it whether or not it will become the next minecraft.
By buying them out at a price set by the competitor involved, sure, and only after the first renewal is due, sure.
Of course, a monopolistic incumbent can have the public (instead of tolerating monopoly rents) and prospective competition band toether to buy it's technology out into the public domain for competition to use, too.
> If you're creating something for the first time e.g. a small indie game, you need to know before you release it whether or not it will become the next minecraft.
Well, no, because we are talking about the method for setting a renewal tax for copyright, not an initial one. So you have to have an idea of how valuable it is to you before the first renewal.
(I like the 4-12 year granted period proposed upthread, but using the declared value approach I would probably go with annual renewals with a long limit—maybe even the current maximum—rather than 6mo renewal with a 21 year cap.)
I might keep the idea of having an exponentially escalating fee by doing that for a required floor to declared value of a work (maybe even instead of a maximum time limit.) Have a nominal floor at the first renewal (say, $1 in today's money) and increasing by 50% each year, with the annual fee as 5% of the declared value. Sure, you can keep renewing as long as you want, but after 50 years of renewals you're at a $32 million minimum renewal fee.
That's actually the only scenario where this copyright extension will cause the creation of new works. Barring that, yes, it's just a money grab by copyright holders (most of whom are not even the artists who created the works).
Their argument is that the government extending copyright should be balanced by some public good (such as releasing more works in to the public domain).
Without such a public good being served, this is just a money grab by the copyright holders. These are generally are not the creators or artists, but rather publishers and other corporations. So if your support for this legislation hinges on the illusion that its the creators or artists who will be the primary beneficiaries of it, you might want to reconsider.
Their article is not meant to persuade you of that, but to inform concerned people about how to contact their representatives.