EU Officially Seizes The Public Domain, Retroactively Extends Copyright

It's a Techdirt article, so it is not surprising that it gets the facts wrong. No works are being removed from the public domain.

Furthermore, this only applies to sound recordings. Under current EU law, the copyright in a sound recording does not last as long as the copyright in the underlying musical work. Wouldn't that mean that even if the sound recording passed into the public domain, the public would not be able to make use of that recording because the underlying musical work would still be under copyright?

The only ones who benefit from the sound recording going out of copyright before the underlying musical copyright, it seems to me, are the record labels--they get to go from paying royalties on both the performance and the composition to just paying royalties on the composition.

I can't help but feeling like this doesn't really matter. Music has been for me, as a listener and as a musician who sometimes uses samples, effectively free and without copyright for years now. It's already nearly impossible to make money by selling recorded sound. This just slows down the decay of the music industry, easing the transition to whatever new model will arise. And I don't mean economic model - I'm prepared for the recorded music industry to die completely. What replaces it may be an industry based around live, communal, algorithmic, etc. modes of music creation or music may lose importance to Western culture altogether. (As for other industries like SFX, movie soundtracks, etc., I don't know the story.)

They are not presently in the public domain, therefore it is not seizing from the public domain. Rather, it is preventing from entering the public domain. There is a difference.

If you would like to claim they are "effectively" the same thing, then why would you choose a term that is different from, and exaggerates, reality? The answer is because you know there is a difference, but know the exaggerated form is more compelling, and you evidently don't have significant qualms with regard to misleading people using overly-sensationalist headlines in serious political matters.

You accurately point out that this does not incentivize the creation of the works which have already been created. But the way it incentivizes new works is by showing that copyright is now protected and ensured by the government to a greater extent. Considering the impractically weak enforcement of copyright and subsequent rampant piracy of the Internet age, this can be viewed as compensatory. Those who would make copyrighted material now have more to gain from creating said copyrighted works, and they can also logically anticipate further possible improvements to the law in their favor as a result of this precedent. The article assures us so.

But incentive to create works is not the only point of copyright law. Another point is simple justice: that a person who creates something deserves to have it as their intellectual property. Justice still has a place in the legislative decisions of the state, I hope.

Copyright protection is granted on the promise that the work will eventually be given to the public domain. As this is obviously never going to happen, I say the copyright holders have failed to hold up their end of the bargain, and we as a society has no longer any obligation to protect their works.

The claim made is that copyright must be extended to properly encourage the creation of new works of art. Beatles' made their entire discography under copyright laws which would put their works in the public domain by now. Seemingly the shorter copyright didn't stop them from recording music back then. And how has extending copyright encouraged them to make more music? Right. It haven't.

With the public domain effectively a thing of the past, we should do away with copyright as well.

My immediate reaction was WHAT THE FRACK.

Thinking about it a bit more, I am surprised that the European Union is effectively capable of shoving this type of legislation down the metaphorical throats of its member states. Were there other countries besides Denmark opposing the law?

In most places when the government seizes property the citizens are entitled to compensation (and to sue if they don't get it). I wonder what the result of a EU-wide class action from citizens to demand compensation for the loss of every single creative work in the applicable time period would be?

That writeup was short and pointedly sweet.

To make sense of this one would have to think about the nice houses and luxury articles these politicians will buy for their wives and/or mistresses from the money they got from the copyright holders for this.

Yea, I'm cynical, why are you not?

The powerful do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must. I have the gun, I'll take the pesos, that seems fair to me.

Yeah, this and the U.S. government's granting companies permission to use huge amounts of mercury to mine and refine gold on public land are the two most unambiguous cases of government wrong I know about.