EU Commissioner Proposes 95 year Copyright

Albanach writes "The European Union Commissioner for the Internal Market has today proposed extending the copyright term for musical recordings to 95 years. He also wishes to investigate options for new levies on blank discs, data storage and music and video players to compensate artists and copyright holders for 'legal copying when listeners burn an extra version of an album to play one at home and one in the car ... People are living longer and 50 years of copyright protection no longer give lifetime income to artists who recorded hits in their late teens or early twenties, he said.'"

Sweet!

[Captain Splendid (673276)]

That clinches it, I'm moving back to Europe.

Obviously, Crack is cheaper and more plentiful over there.

Re:Sweet!

[Brian Gordon (987471)]

Must be, this is crazy. How do artists need to be compensated for making copies of their work? You own the CD, you can copy it, as many times as you want, give/sell it to whoever you want, period. This imaginary property thinking is getting eerily pervasive.. nobody even thinks to question it anymore, even on slashdot.

Re:Sweet!

[orasio (188021)]

Because the only way artists get compensated is via copies of their work?

I don't get it.
If you buy a CD from an artist, is he losing money because you transfer them to your Ipod?
I thought that by buying the CD you were buying a license to listen to the song, regardless of the media. I don't see why an artist should care how I listen to what I paid for.

Re:Sweet!

[eiapoce (1049910)]

Answer is: Stop paying for music. Once they run out of money they will have no way of corrupting our goverment into these laws.

Re:Sweet!

[KnightNavro (585943)]

musical artists make their scratch from concerts, not album sales.

So the Beatles didn't make a dime after their last concert in 1966?

Album sales are the sole source of income for many bands that don't tour. Lots of bands and artists that rely on heavy studio production can't effectively take their show on the road and live on album sales alone.

Re:Sweet!

[Sparr0 (451780)]

Then they are in the wrong line of work. The explicitly stated purpose of copyright is to encourage the creation of new works, NOT to ensure the lifetime income of works creators. If they want to make more money, start writing/performing new stuff.

Re:Sweet!

[Sparr0 (451780)]

Write 1 hit song, get exclusive rights to it for 14 years. 13 years later, realize the gravy train is running out and you need to write another song... Sounds like incentive to me.

Re:Sweet!

[beav007 (746004)]

How about "get a real job, like everyone else"?

Honestly, how many people here expect to be able to design a and then sit back for the rest of their lives receiving money for it? You get paid for your time, and then you get given the next project. You stop working, you stop getting paid.

Disclaimer: I am a non-recording (hobby) musician.

Re:Sweet!

[arth1 (260657)]

They do get compensated. Question is for how long they should continue to be compensated for something they no longer lift a finger for.
The whole purpose of the copyright is to ensure progress, not individual riches.

If anything, with the rate of progress being so much higher today than it was back when copyrights first were instated, it would make sense to make current copyrights shorter than what they were back then. Say 5 years. That would ensure that the artists would get a good source of income while working on their next production, and even be allowed to fail once or twice. And it would prevent them from resting on their laurels, which doesn't exactly enrich the world.

And, quite frankly, this isn't about the artist anymore. Since copyrights unfortunately aren't unalienable rights, but goods that can be sold (even before the creation happens!), the real beneficiaries of copyright extensions are big companies who don't create anything, just make money on other people creating.
If nobody were allowed to sell the rights to their creation, only enter short term distribution agreements, then artists wouldn't have to sell their rights in order to make money, because they would not compete with others able and willing to do so. They would be free to switch to a higher bidder or better marketer, a freedom which in itself would cause an increase in worth for their product. But they would have to keep on producing, or eventually the income would drain up.

Regards,
--
*Art

Re:Sweet!

[dedalus2000 (704571)]

The idea of working on something for a few weeks or months then getting payed for the remainder of your life seems kind of odd to me. artists can't make a dime for a work half done so some term of protection is certainly in all of our interests but anything past 14 years is corporate welfare. At some point the value of the original work is recouped and further copy protections become hindrances in that they discourage further development based on the original works and further productivity by the original creator. we limit the rights of society as a whole to produce copies of original works in order to encourage production of original works beyond that there is no value social or otherwise in limiting these individual rights.

Re:Sweet!

[Mr. Shiny And New (525071)]

The thing is, copyright is already "lifetime + 70" for the composers of the piece. The royalties in question in the article are for PERFORMERS. Now, performing music is hard, but so is surgery, and we don't pay surgeons once they retire.

Re:Sweet!

[KnightNavro (585943)]

You're missing the point. Some bands just aren't touring bands, like the Beatles post 1966. They continued to produce great music after they stopped touring (Sgt Pepper, Abbey Road, Let It Be...).

A more modern band may not tour for several reasons. Perhaps they don't gig because he lives in New Zealand, the singer's in London, and the guitarist lives in LA. To make a track, each musician lays down a track and FTPs it to their server, where the next guy downloads it to add his part. Should they be denied the right to make money for their music?

Another example is one or two guys hanging out in a basement studio who lay down six or seven instruments worth of music. Yeah, they could go on tour and play their one or two instruments live while flying in the rest, but I'd feel robbed if that's what I saw for a $20 dollar ticket. Plus, many audiences want to see same band live as they hear on the CD. They could take the huge financial risk of hiring a band, teaching them the music, quitting their day jobs, and doing everything live, but why not just sell the CDs, keep their day jobs, and make enough money to cover the cost of the studio?

Another example is a supergroup or a collaboration where the various members only have enough availability to be in the same place at the same time for one week to create the album, then they have to go to their regular bands.

There is no shortage of reasons that a band may not tour.

I'm not talking about a 95 year copyright being reasonable (it's not), but to say that a band should make all its money by gigging is ridiculous.

Re:Sweet!

[rkanodia (211354)]

I do think that people should be able to get paid for recordings if you want to, but if you don't want to, you know, go out and do a job every day like everyone else does, maybe you shouldn't complain that you aren't getting paid every week living everyone else is.

Re:Sweet!

[poetmatt (793785)]

And whose fault is it if they don't want to tour? Not ours? Not our job to supply someone else's income, you know. Whose fault is it they failed to make a product that gives people a reason to want to pay for it? This is why people fail businesses lately, and I have no sympathy for that.

There are plenty of people who make their own CD and bootleg copies of it to make a living for example. Technobrega in Brazil is a great example of that. You're disputing how Much people should be paid for it, not if they should or not.

People are paid for their work in a variety of fashions. You could sell it anywhere. The key word there is in some form you have to sell your music. Just because you made it in the past doesn't entitle you to be paid for it in the future unless you figure out how to sell it.

The intent of copyright is to create a reason for innovation. When you have no financial incentive to create more things, where are you to say that there is innovation?
When a DJ wants to mix your song but can't because you won't give him rights (or even royalties, or not enough royalties), are you "protecting your rights" or stifling innovation?

Re:Sweet!

[JoshHeitzman (1122379)]

People have no right to get paid for a single work for the rest of their life. Most people do not get this government privilege and I see no reason why musicians other artists should either.

Re:Sweet!

[Chosen Reject (842143)]

I think I can understand why it bothers you. Are you the type of person who thinks price is related only to cost? Are you the type of person who thinks price and value are the same? If you are, then that is why you have such a hard time with it.

First, price and cost are two unrelated things. As an example, diamonds cost a whole lot more than they cost to extract from the earth. And there are some things that are priced only slightly more than they cost to produce, otherwise nobody could sell it at a profit (ignoring loss leaders here). So yes, it is hard to create music (cost), but the market doesn't price it that high. Part of the reason the market doesn't price it much is because recording costs are practically nil. That might seem a contradiction, but what I'm really saying is that copies are so easy to make, that they become an infinite good. You cannot create a business around infinite goods alone. You have to sell something other than the copy, because copies are so easy to come by.

Second, price and value are totally separate beasts. As an example, air is invaluable to humans, but a business would have a hard time making money by selling it because it is so abundant. Again, because copies of music are infinite goods, prices come down. The value is still the same. That is, no one values music less just because it's easy to copy, they just get it free.

That is why the only way to make money off of albums is to try to control it with the threat of law and DRM. The problem though is DRM doesn't stop piracy, but instead annoys paying customers[1]. And copyright law is becoming so ludicrous (including what some copyright holders are doing to enforce it) that people no longer have respect for that law.

Artists have to realize that. This is really a business model issue. Somebody above asked what happens if the musician didn't want to tour or the live performance didn't fit their music. They have several options. They can decide not to make their music, they can make their music and release it to the world for free, they can try to control it with DRM or threat of law (as mentioned above, this isn't looking all that good), or they can find other ways to make a profit from it (perhaps commissioned work, or have performances where they introduce each prerecorded piece). The first option doesn't get anywhere, the second option might not make any money but may get them recognition for a job making music (say for movies or operas or something), the third option is what a lot are doing now, but the fourth option can make them money.

[1]I watched Spider-Man 3 the other day and I swear there were at least three copyright notices before I started to watch the movie. That is just stupid. Copyright infringers (which are the people making copies to sell or give away) aren't going to pay attention to it, and are probably going to not copy that part anyway.

Re:Sweet!

[sm62704 (957197)]

The copyright is shorter. Not short enough; I think the twenty years it used to be here in the US is plenty long, and I say that as a copyright holder.

In fact, there are many at slashdot who want to abolish copyright entirely. I think there would be far fewer of these folks if copyrights were sanely limited.

I don't know about Europe, but here in the US we're not supposed to have lifetime copyrights. In fact, our Constitution specifies copyrights and patents are to get artists to create in order that the public domain be enriched, and that they should last "a limited time." SCOTUS fucktards, ignoring the plain language the Constitution was written in, have ruled that "limited" means whatever Congress wants it to mean.

Since all US laws are based on the Constitution, and the Supreme Court is ignoring it, I choose to ignore all the other God damned laws they write and to hell with them.

-mcgrew [slashdot.org]

Re:Sweet!

[dslbrian (318993)]

"Since all US laws are based on the Constitution, and the Supreme Court is ignoring it, I choose to ignore all the other God damned laws they write and to hell with them." Two wrongs do not make a right.

It's called civil disobedience, and when governments lose all moral standing it can be the right thing to do.

Re:Sweet!

[dmomo (256005)]

I don't understand why even the artist is entitled to profiting for their entire life. An economy has only so much budget for creative works. Every penny paid was generated from productivity. It seems wrong that we are putting production resources towards work that has long been compensated.

- Artist does work
- This costs productivity / resources
- Artist gets paid for work by money generated from productivit
- Amount of productivity / resources paid to artist doubles productivity exerted by Artist
- Every time the artist gets paid for this work, productivity and resources are being poured into a black hole. Nothing is being created. Resources are being wasted.

This is just bad economics. In short, people are laboring, and that labor benefits just one person. We can only afford to buy so much art. As the pool of available art increases, the budget for this does not. So we have less available for new works. It's time to free up those resources to put artists to work!

Re:Sweet!

[Robber Baron (112304)]

Yeah I know I'd like to still be getting paid for work I did 20 years ago! You're still living in that house aren't you? Well I helped build it, and since you're still using it, I should still be getting paid!

Why?

[nebaz (453974)]

Why should anyone get a lifetime income for one thing they created? If they do, why would they bother creating anything else?

Re:Why?

[Hognoxious (631665)]

A lifetime income could be a million dollars a week or it could be 25 cents a month. However 95 years is just plain crazy.

Re:Why?

[moderatorrater (1095745)]

There's a much simpler solution to that problem anyway: make the copyright end when the artist dies.

Re:Why?

[Jamu (852752)]

I think it's better for the artists if there isn't any financial incentive to see them dead.

Re:Why?

[Laur (673497)]

But then, when a successful artist dies in an airplane crash their wife and kids will be bankrupt very soon.

That's what life insurance is for. Guess what, my employer will stop my paychecks when I die as well. The purpose of copyright is not to provide a legacy so your wife and kids will never have to do any productive work.

Re:Why?

[ZombieRoboNinja (905329)]

Guess what, you (apparently) get paid RIGHT AWAY for your work, not in royalties over a period of years.

Fifty years is more than long enough, but that should be whether the artist is alive or not.

Re:Why?

[KublaiKhan (522918)]

Indeed--aren't copyrights and patents supposed to -encourage- innovation?

Besides, if you're so poor at managing money that you can't leverage 50 years of income into a retirement account, you're an idiot.

Why is it none of the music or movie folks seem to have heard of a 401k or IRA or equivalent, anyway?

Re:Why?

[Orange Crush (934731)]

Why should anyone get a lifetime income for one thing they created? If they do, why would they bother creating anything else?

Come on, does anyone here honestly believe this has anything at all to do with the actual artists? If someone recorded hits in their teens or twenties, I highly doubt they'll be relying on the pathetic residuals their label deigns to pay them to stay out of the poor house.

The record companies just don't want to give up their revenue on oldies--music from 1958 and prior is now lapsing into the public domain in Europe. This is music from the birth of rock and roll, i.e. Chuck Berry (who still performs at concerts, mind you!), Elvis, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, and loads more. These are classics that people are still buying new CDs of, putting on their iPods, etc. Chuck's not gonna wind up on the streets because Johnny B. Good can be downloaded legally for free, but the record company still wants their cut. *THAT'S* what this is really all about.

Re:Why?

[mhall119 (1035984)]

because it's not your job to make sure they create something else.

It's also not our job to make sure they can live comfortably without working for 70+ years.

It's theirs to do with as they may, and no law you made should be able to take that away from them.

And no law stops them from doing whatever the like with what they create. The law stops you and I from doing whatever *we* like with our copy.

why should you get something from them for free?

Nobody says we should. What people want is to be able to do whatever they want with that something *after* the artist has been compensated for it's creation.

why would you bother creating anything yourself?

Because artists like to create. Most musicians and visual artists in the world today get little or no compensation for their creations, yet they continue to create. Historically, artists have almost never been given decent compensation for the act of creation, and yet history is full of some of the best art (visual and musical) ever created, certainly better than most of the crap we're getting from millionaire artists these days. Inventors will continue to invent without patents, and artists will continue to create without copyrights, because that is who they are.

Re:If they don't

[plague3106 (71849)]

Well, you can earn a living. Except you need to do it pretty often. As in, I need to go to work almost every weekday to earn my living. Why should an musician be done their "job" after one song?

Re:Why?

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

Back to the topic a little more, why SHOULDN'T someone profit from something they created for that long?

I make a living from copyright, and I am very lazy. I am completely okay with the idea of being paid in perpetuity for something I create now, but I am also aware that it removes my incentive to create more. The purpose of copyright, sadly, is not for me to get rich. It is to make me (and, more realistically, others) create things that enrich our culture. Imagine if Mozart have been able to keep cashing in on his first symphony for his entire life. Would he have bothered writing the other 40?

Copyright needs to be a balance. A good creator needs to be rewarded well enough that they can make more creating than doing something else, but not so well that they just stop. I remember Terry Pratchett saying (possibly quoting someone else) 'when you stop writing, you aren't an author, you're just some guy who wrote a book once.' The copyright system should reward authors, not guys who wrote a book once (and I say this as a guy who wrote a book once).

Absurd

[dustmite (667870)]

So get a job, honestly, nobody inherently deserves to be able to survive decades from doing something once early in life unless it was truly highly valuable to society (in which case it should pay for itself, and shouldn't require forced theft of taxpayers to give somebody money for sitting on their butt). Go flip burgers or make new recordings or something, leeching from others is disgusting.

Re:Absurd

[Quiet_Desperation (858215)]

So get a job, honestly, nobody inherently deserves to be able to survive decades from doing something once early in life

Or *invest* those earnings from the big hit and live off of that. I have no sympathy for people who were millionaires due to some one time hit and then frittered it away.

Why bother?

[Hexedian (626557)]

Why bother? It's not like anything created by the current artists in their teens will still be listened to five years from now, let alone fifty...

I agree!

[Jaysyn (203771)]

I think that the government & various communications companies that I've done work for over the years should pay me for my designs & plans for 95 years after their creation. Why yes, they are works of art!

Re:I agree!

[NeutronCowboy (896098)]

Someone give this guy props and mod him insightful. I won't comment too much, since there are plenty of comments already that point out the absurdity of this.

I'll just reiterate: there's nothing special about what an artist creates. An artist either fills a supply niche with material for which there is demand, or they're just doing intellectual masturbation. And yes, I'm dead serious with that statement.

This means that if an artist can't find a buyer, they don't deserve an income. Now, there's indeed the wrinkle of near-free unlimited distribution of digital copies of their work. Sell your song or painting to one person, and everyone in the world has access to the digital copy. Here are the options to deal with this: make sure that the first sale of the song compensates you for the work you put into it, or get enough people to pay for it to provide enough aggregate compensation. The simplest solution for this is still the tried and true live performance. You can't copy it, because then it wouldn't be live. You can easily calculate how much you need to charge to make a living.

That said, I can live with a certain amount of copyright law. This will make it easier for artists to create income and won't make the creation of art into a rat race of who can copy whose popular work the best. Personally, I'd like to see it be as long as a patent: 20 years. If 20 years is enough time to recoup investment in creating new technology, it is enough time to recoup investment in creating new art. Also, I don't think that copyright should end with the death of the artist. I'm sure there are enough people out there who aren't above killing someone to be able to freely copy and perform a piece of art. Not having the death provision in there will remove an incentive for killing. It's true that it's already illegal to kill someone, but it also doesn't mean we have to give killers a reason to kill.

Aww, damnit.

[Penguinisto (415985)]

I'm personally hoping the make a special category for bubblegum pop music - that crap can be copyrighted for 10,000 years. Sort of like how you lock up radioactive waste based on half-life.

/P

The stupid. It burns.

[Noryungi (70322)]

Quite honestly, if (like me) you are a European, I guess it's time to kick some butt and make Europe more democratic.

Whoever that Commissioner is, I propose we all sack him. With extreme prejudice, if you see what I mean...

OK, this being said, anyone ready to open a petition against this stooopid copyright extension?

Re:The stupid. It burns.

[alext (29323)]

McCreevy is a Commissioner for the Irish Republic. He has previous form in attempting to impose US-style software patents in the EU.

Previously Ireland finance minister, his basic position is whatever is good for big business is good for the EU.

Copyright time should be reduced, not increased

[andyh3930 (605873)]

If I do a days work I get paid a days wage, I don't see why it should be that much different for Musicians.

If it takes 6 months to record an album why should they still get paid for the work in 90 years? Copyright time should be reduced, not increased After this time it would become freely distributable. If the time was reduced to 7-10 years this would surely promote creativity.

However the artist should keep control if music was going to be used for other purpose other than listening (movie soundtrack or advert ) and be allowed to permit or deny such use.

This would be a fairer system all round.

Cheers Charlie...

[MosesJones (55544)]

Ruddy hell there are some people who really do give the Irish a bad name....

Charlie McCreevy [europa.eu] is an ex-Irish MP and a chartered accountant whose biggest role was as Minister for Finance in Ireland.

Currently has no registered special interests of note, but damn he has come up with a stupid proposal. Even something sensible like "until death" would have met the requirements for people living longer whereas 95 years is just about the corporations behind the people.

A Little More Info On the Ex-TD

[ObsessiveMathsFreak (773371)]

Charlie McCreevy is an ex-Irish MP and a chartered accountant whose biggest role was as Minister for Finance in Ireland.

McCreevy was in fact, sent off to Europe for the express purpose of exiling him from Irish Politics. Even in his own Free Market centric party, his policies were far too Thatcherite to let him continue to make his characteristically brash polemics. He gleefully accepted his "promotion" to European statesman, and his party, and indeed the country, breathed a collective sigh of relief.

McCreevy has a history of giving tax breaks and other concessions to industries and business that he "approves of". Witness his institution of a 0% tax on bets made at horse race meetings (he's a big fan of the sport). He's a supply sider with little time for anything that doesn't immediately net money i.e., fair use, hospitals, etc. He's been mentioned before on Slashdot here [slashdot.org] and here [slashdot.org]. The "loose cannon" quote is particularly apt.

Charlie McCreevy is the type of politician lobbyists love. He'll wine and dine, brunch and lunch with all manner of industry representatives and indeed has by the looks of things. Rest assured that when he finally steps down from his post (forcing him out will require tectonic pressure) the entire European Parliment, and Union, will breath a collective sigh of relief.

Self defeating

[Mprx (82435)]

The more ridiculous the so called "intellectual property" laws become, the faster the remaining traces of respect the average person has for them will erode. While there's a valid argument for a short copyright term being beneficial to society, 95 years will only encourage people to ignore the law altogether.

Re:Self defeating

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

Mod parent up (more). I make a living from copyright, and this kind of proposal worries me. Copyright is a bargain between the creator and society. Society agrees to enforce a (limited, temporary) monopoly on my behalf, which is really great for me. In return, they get certain limited rights now and complete rights later.

Gradually, this deal has been skewed more and more in my favour (w00t). The problem is, 100% of the bargaining power is on the side of society as a whole. If I don't like the copyright terms, what can I do? Stop writing and get a real job? Wow, that would suck.

Let's look at what society really gets. Limited rights immediately? Well, kind of. Unfortunately, unscrupulous copyright holders are trying to take these away with DRM. Since governments haven't done the sensible thing, and made DRM and copyright an either-or proposition, society as a whole gets screwed and loses these short-term benefits. Well, what about the long term? They still get the works falling into the public domain, right? Well, in theory. Pop songs that were hits when my parents were at school are still under copyright. Stuff that written when my grandparents (who are all dead now) were at school is now falling into the public domain though...

Eventually, the population is going to wake up and say 'wait a second, we aren't getting anything out of this.' Eventually? Well, the last poll I saw said that around 90% of the population infringed copyright on a regular basis, so 'eventually' really means 'now.' How long does it take for something that 90% of the population think is morally acceptable to get legalised? If we, as copyright holders, don't start proposing reasonable compromises, it won't be long before the population starts to realise that copyright only exists because they agree to enforce it and decide that a fairer deal is not to enforce it at all. If that happens, then there's really not a huge amount we can do.

Since when do artists deserve

[rolfwind (528248)]

a lifetime income? Can't they make enough profit off of it the first 50 or so ridiculously long years? Works often make the most money in the beginning of their life, not so many years later when it is no longer in synce with the zeitgeist that imbues so many creative products and fads.

I can't get a lifetime income based on most work I did so many years ago. Neither do others.

The purpose of copyright was to give an incentive to produce and publish material -- and have society benefit both by initially recieving it and then getting it in public domain. Enforcement costs money (police, courts, etcetera), so this time-limited monopoly was a fair arrangement.

But by no means was it to guarantee an income for life. That seems a little too much for just any random creative work when others have to make a day to day living. Not that I believe "it's for the poor starving artists!" line anyway.

Lifetime income?

[arthurh3535 (447288)]

"lifetime income to artists who recorded hits in their late teens or early twenties, he said."????

When does everyone else get to have lifetime income too? And this only includes productions that were recorded way back when. There is nothing stopping said artist from re-recording a newer version of that hit song (best of...) that will have the same copyright protections.

Why do artists and government officials think that Copyright means 'money for forever?'

WHAT?

[Card (30431)]

People are living longer and 50 years of copyright protection no longer give lifetime income to artists who recorded hits in their late teens or early twenties

The commissioner is either ignorant or lying. I don't know which one is worse.

The chosen term was 70 years from the death of the author (post mortem auctoris) for authors' rights (Art. 1), longer than the 50 year post mortem auctoris term required by the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (Art. 7.1 Berne Convention). (Wikipedia [wikipedia.org])

He should mean that the artists' children can enjoy the royalties for mere 50 years after their parent has died. Cry me a river.

Re:Trolling

[KublaiKhan (522918)]

I'm copyrighting(c) the use of the word copyright(c). Everyone who uses the word copyright(c) must put a little copyright(c) (c) after it, and give me $.05 for each instance.

I'm also copyrighting(c) the word copyleft(c), so you Gnu folks won't get away with it either.

And the copyright(c) (c) notation? Yep, copyrighting(c) that too.

This post copyright(c) me, 2008.

You FAIL

[Mr. Underbridge (666784)]

I hereby copyright Trolling. Nobody is allowed to troll without my permission. License fees start at 100 BILLION dollars.

Sorry punk. You can only copyright your own troll posts. Provided the act of trolling weren't patented, which it is, by me.

My lawyers will be in touch.

Sincerely,

Mr. Underbridge

Resident Troll

Re:That doesn't make sense

[ewilts (121990)]

> Why would artists need compensating for when people make *legal* copies?

More importantly, why should an artist be compensated when I burn my spreadsheets to a blank CD?

The stupid assumption is that the blank media will be used to store music only. A levy on "data storage" makes no sense at all.