Copyright Time Bomb Set to Disrupt Music, Publishing Industries

wired.com

75 pointsALee23 comments

As a libertarian I'm inclined to believe that the whole idea of IP is just a farce made up by corporate interests. Maybe it wasn't like that in the beginning, but no doubt that's what it is today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act

Copyright are government granted monopolies. That it has resulted in a huge industry that lives out of rent seeking and produces nothing of value is hardly surprising, and as technology threatens their rotten business models expect their grip on government to tighten and to capture the whole legal system.

Get a grip, the internet will win in the end. Technology is society's master, not the other way around.

I'd like to think so. But honestly I think it could go either way. Not because of technology but because of society's seeming apathy about the value of liberty.

The relevant liberty here is the liberty of data. It is probably the most widely exercised form of political protest/lawlessness/criminality today (drug use being a close runner-up: liberty of body).

So, no, I don't think our apathy will allow the government to be overrun by copyright thugs -- we already have the cure and it's already prevalent.

Now, these are fairly base liberties being totally about the individual: "Copying data doesn't deprive. I want this data. Yay!" "Doing drugs doesn't hurt others. I want to feel different. Yay!"

The trick will be to maintain our loftier ideals like freedom of speech, freedom of press, and the right to privacy which I can very, very easily see being taken away.

Just because its so cool, Lessig's OSCON speech on copyright:

http://randomfoo.net/oscon/2002/lessig/

Favorite quote (paraphrased) "Disney didn't want others to do to them what they did to the Brothers Grimm."

Or indeed what they did to King Ludwig II.

http://www.castles.org/castles/Europe/Central_Europe/Germany...

Disney basically ripped off the design for one of their most iconic images..

There's so many good examples of this. For instance, The Lion King vs Kimba the White Lion:

http://www.kimbawlion.com/rant2.htm

Copyright needs to be reconsidered, especially in this ever changing digital world we live where, copies can be made in the blink of an eye.

On the other hand, Record Labels are evil. They continue to rip off artists by claiming ownership of (the artist's work) through copyright, while giving the 'Content Creators' very little.

The RIAA's days are numbered...

Great post!

Artists willing and freely entered into contracts with the record labels. Many artists continue to do so everyday.

Record labels aren't any more or less evil than VC firms.

You're right, Artists still feel they have to sign "that" contract, in order to make it BIG. This is because of the misconception the music industry has put out there, knowing too well that artists will fall for it.

Good analogy on comparing record labels to VC firms, but I believe one is still more evil-er than the other.

When I was young in the 70's artists either entered into a contract with the few major labels, or they remained unknown. The oligopoly owned the big studios, they had the major venues sewn up, and they had the radio stations and DJs. That's not my idea of willingly and freely.

Record labels aren't any more or less evil than VC firms.

This may or may not be true, but at this point I'd say that record labels are less necessary than VC firms.

I've never dealt with VCs from 'the inside', so it's certainly possible they're just as slimy. I suspect they aren't, because there's no distribution choke point as there is (was) in music, so they can't effectively enforce shenanigans. (They also don't lobby nearly as much, get weasel-words inserted into legislation on the sly, nor have they been found guilty of horiztonal collusion and anticompetitive practices. several times)

But even if they were, equivocation doesn't validate the correctness of either market. And the existence of contracts certainly don't somehow validate the way things work.

I wonder how this applies to software development. The article says it applies to works for hire; if there's 35-year-old code out there, could the original author get rights to some part of the program back or otherwise block use of the software? I could still see this being applicable for legacy mainframe code.

"works for hire" are an exception. The 'timebomb' only applies to people who specifically sold their copyright. In the case of works for hire, the legal author was always the corporation; the 'real' authors never owned the copyright.

So no coder is getting the copyright back on his corporate code. Similarly, almost no film or tv writers will get their copyrights back. Nor will most musical acts from the more-modern era. (Somehow, dead tree publishing isn't built on 'work for hire' contracts. So this will likely let many print authors renegotiate.)

Anyway, starting around the late 80s labels required recording artists to sign the same sort of farcical 'work for hire' contract that other authors are forced to sign.

("yeah, I wrote this while I was being paid a salary, receiving health benefits and all that jazz. I certainly wasn't building it over the last three years of working two jobs, playing dive bars and eating baloney-on-hand. I just met you yesterday, sign this contract today and it springs fully-formed from my head tomorrow -- just for you and without any of those pesky W2s or insurance forms.")

That's why the music industry didn't push too hard to get these old recordings covered -- it's a temporary blip, not a threat to their current model.

As a musician, I hope they go bankrupt as soon as possible :)

>The second option is to re-record sound recordings in order to create new sound recording copyrights, which would reset the countdown clock at 35 years for copyright grant termination. Eveline characterized the labels’ conversations with creators going something like, "Okay, you have the old mono masters if you want - but these digital remasters are ours."

That sounds like nonsense to me. Remasters are only redone mixes of old recordings, so if anything, the original artists own at least part if that copyright. Thus: this should be a joined copyright, with a right to veto: if the original artist doesn't want the new remasters to be re-released, he ought to be able to block it.

This has been a very long time coming though; so how many record deals made since this Act was passed will have ignored the end of a revenue stream 35 years from when the recording is made, and gone in at what will now be a loss? Clearly, accountants in the music biz will have been factoring/warning about this for ages. A timebomb? I really don't think so.

Totally aside, I really don't see the logic in saying that digital remasters are new works and warrant individual copyright protection. I don't know much about the process, but I assume that it's merely a transformation/reprint of an original recording, no?

I'm working on a sheet music app (wonderwarp.com/opus) and it's been irritating to discover how much old music is still under copyright. Like, pretty much the entire genre of jazz. Hopefully more of it expires soon.

Just to clarify, the issue in this article isn't exactly expiration or lapse, it's just the possibility of transferring ownership.

Sheet music is another outlier, rights holders convinced the legal establishment that there is significant work and art in the particular engraving (the style used to print the music) allowing rights on the engraving of many works that are out of copyright. This means that much sheet music can be transcribed legitimately but can't be directly copied (photocopy, scan and reprint, etc.). Check not only the copyright dates on the particular scores but also the production dates for the music itself - the number of changes to copyright law (particularly in USA) in the 1900s make it a minefield.

Apologies that you probably know this already.

I heard of this in my Copyright class, but it never hit me that this would turn the tables on the RIAA companies.

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