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Comment by latchkey | Hacker News Reader

It is fascinating how copyright holders are forcing the removal of some of the history.

    "EDIT: Had to remove about 3.5 mins of this due to a claim by "April Wine"...I really tried to get them to understand that this was an historical archive, *not* an attempt to steal money from their band....They didn't want to hear it...All the other artist were totally ok with this but "April Wine" said FU. Go Figure : / EDIT: EDIT: Video was taken down again because Cliff Richard suddenly decided that I was ripping him off and shut down the video...I wrote back trying to get him to change his mind but no deal, had to chop Cliff out of the video for it to be posted again. Sorry everyone."

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Imagine being this persnickety about any use of a song that was relevant more than 30 years ago, and hasn't really been since.

That's why you don't use YouTube and instead use a decentralized platform.

No. Ignoring copyright law and people's desires for their own content, isn't the solution.

I suspect that using a platform where there isn't any way to profit at all is a better solution. But in this case, the CR owners have probably been burned for years and just don't want to have any more discussion around the matter. It is easier to just say no.

Finding solutions that make it harder to say no seems like a better goal... of course that probably means paying them.

> Ignoring copyright law and people's desires for their own content, isn't the solution.

If this were actually true, then all these other platforms wouldn't exist.

This belongs to archive.org not youtube.

I agree with that sentiment for sure.

Imagine if the Rosetta Stone was digital and all ancient text inscribed there was rendered unreadable due to some for of copyright claim and following takedown. Today we would likely know squat about ancient Egyptian language.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone

Copyright laws are a good thing, but when they become abusive, then they do a lot more damage than having no copyright laws at all.

Imagine purposefully erasing your own tiny slice of history. Congratulations, nobody cares about you and nobody will ever again.

My favorite story about copyright is that the Beatles denied NASA to put "Here comes the sun" on the Voyager golden record, because NASA didn't want to pay them royalte fees.

This is why copyright should be ~10 years. Most money is made within the first year and it's a steep drop off after.

I have an online video game and it has been making a few thousand bucks a year for over 10 years. I'm not really ready for all its art to become public domain just yet.

Good point! OTOH author’s death + 70 years feels way too long.

I'm curious what you think the art becoming public domain would do. Do you think you'd be swamped with competitors if they didn't need to spend what you did on art assets? Or other things would use that art and then users would find your game and not try it as they've seen the art?

Why is this a reason for copyright to be 10 years? I mean, that's a valid perspective (though I disagree with it), but this case doesn't provide any new information.

For the record, were did you get the idea that most money is made within the first year? Sure, for the biggest stars this might be true. But lots of "middle-tier" creators depend on royalties from copyright works early in their career to sustain them their whole life.

That’d probably work with music. But it’d be a disaster for authors. Often it takes more than a decade to go from book to movie, for example.

I think copyright should be much shorter, but I’m not sure it’d be right to have a bunch of knock off Harry Potter books, movies, and merch as soon as 2007.

Tolkien is the counter example. There’s no reason we should be protecting his work still today, 50 years after his death. They should be public domain by now.

Tolkien won't be out of copyright in the USA, EU and UK until 2043 :(

By which time Mickey Mouse will have lobbied to extend that yet again.

NASA could put the song on the next probe and promise to pay based on the number of times the song was streamed.

I think this is demonstrably false. The value of Seinfeld, The Simpsons, Friends and The Office is probably higher than they have ever been, given the proliferation of streaming networks. The Beatles catalog only went up in value, which is why Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson had a little tiff. David Bowie sold bonds based on future royalties. And have you noticed what's playing at the movies? It's all superheroes invented 50+ years ago.

I guess you could say april wine were radio stars.

Lol, I get the reference, but, in this case, it’s radio stars killing video rather than vice versa.

The reference is from about 20-25 seconds in to that video, from memory.

Edit: 1:17 in. I'd forgotten about the moon launch bit...

I agree, but I don't think there is a threat here. I think this person genuinely wants to preserve culture or else they wouldn't be editing the video, giving credit and trying to contact people.

That said, youtube probably wasn't the best place to upload the video in light of all of that.

That’s why fair use is a thing. Which this obviously is. But most people don’t have a couple hundred k to drop on counsel.

Pretty wild that MTV would have been playing someone like Cliff Richard. At a time when MTV considered itself at the cutting edge of cool, he just strikes me as so deeply ... not.

OTOH, wasn’t there a little bit of ’50s revival during the ’80s…?

Ah, could be!

yeah but I think that was caused by the Stray Cats being big with their videos on MTV - so Cliff Richard shouldn't have shown up first?

It could also be that MTV were desperate for something to show so they had to resort to old clips that where cheap to license (^_^)

your logic has no affect on me! This was obviously the work of time traveling rockabillies!

Ah. How could I not think of that? Silly me!

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