New IFPI Boss Vows to Extend Recording Copyrights 225
JamesD_UK writes "John Kennedy, President and COO of Universal Music is to succeed Jay Berman as Chairman of the IFPI, the worldwide equivalent to the RIAA. Andrew Orlowski of The Register has written an article covering John Kennedy's views on copyright infringement and the public domain. Although Kennedy's thoughts on the former are predictable, he has vowed to fight hard to extend European recording copyrights past the current fifty year term. An extension of the European term to match the US would be particularly damaging to the public domain and efforts such as the Internet Archive as well as increasing the control that the recording industry holds over performers. For those interested, I run a small blog of articles regarding copyright recordings."
Poor Picasso is rolling over in his grave! (Score:5, Interesting)
Coincidence on their choice of abbreviations? I think not.
He'd be more sympathetic to songwriters, he said, the day that record companies had "50 per cent margins". In fact, he claimed that record companies spend more on R&D than technology companies, because of the marketing spend required to create a hit [*]. The implication was clear: the success of an artist was down to the Shock and Awe bombing of the record company's marketing team, which is very expensive.
I can guarantee you a hit every time. Let me listen to the song. If the song sucks I'll tell you that. Then you can go and pay off every one of your little radio stations owned by ClearChannel and Inifinity (and various other conglomerates) and they can play the sucky song over and over again until people like it. If the song is good the artists should go on tour and make their own money as they have talent and they don't need your pay-offs.
"For 79p you've got a work of art that's like a Picasso, only one that's as close to the original as you can get," he said. [**]
To each their own on musical tastes but man, fucking Picasso is painting a gigantic brown-eye all over the inside of his grave after that comment.
Isn't there something the music purchasers can do to stop this asshole from taking over? Write letters, boycott, something?
Limited? (Score:5, Interesting)
If governments won't stop this trend, maybe competition can. If people come up with a licence that expires in, say, 15 years, and a trademark logo ("Sane copyright inside!"), and companies who wouldn't be impacted by this start using it, it might become popular. Then, people who care could exert direct competitive pressure against those who don't go along.
No, I don't think this will actually happen, but wouldn't it be cool?
Limit copyright (Score:5, Interesting)
Exclusive licences should be limited to 5 years and carry an obligation to publish; if a licencee fails to publish they should lose their rights without compensation.
Goes against the original copyright spirit (Score:5, Interesting)
An interesting sidenote is this: remember when copying a chord (dunno how many notes that was) of song was considered infringement? I wonder what would happen if someone went out and made a pseudosong with every possible combination of a chord. Then they could sue every new song as being "infringing." The whole notion is ridiculous
Re:What I don't understand is... (Score:3, Interesting)
Copyright was put in place from the point of view that if you don't have copyright, you'll get people just ripping off your work and therefore, people won't create. That's very reasonable.
But, 50 years is quite long enough for a person, but then this is more about corporations, not people. Copyright was not created in a time of giants of publishing. When copyright first arrived, it was more about individual creative people, for whom a copyright of even 20 years would grant them sufficient income.
If you record something age 18 and have 50 years, that means it expires when you are 68.
Did anybody read Playboy? (Score:3, Interesting)
Corporations and copyright (Score:3, Interesting)
A thought just occurred to me: why do corporations take ownership of employee's copyrights instead of taking limited exclusive license? It's the employees doing the creating. Why not make Disney pay employees and former employees for continuations of exclusive license, until the copyright formally expires?
Regardless, copyright terms are getting too long. The great masters of 20th century classical music, for example, would gain much greater appreciation if their sheet music were affordable and not artificially jacked up in price by someone who really has no claim to the work.
Re:What I don't understand is... (Score:5, Interesting)
These de facto infinite copyrights that we have now will enable the entertainment industry to charge over and over again for music and movies that should be in the public domain.
You can be guaranteed that if a new physical format for distributing music (the successor to the CD or whatever) takes hold, the record companies will re-release old Elvis and Beatles albums in this format (among plenty of others). They'll probably release them as "commemorative editions" and charge up the wazoo for them as well.
With how things are now, some record company executives who weren't even born yet when the Beatles were creating music will continue to get rich off of their work, even after the remaining two are long dead and buried.
All copyrights need to die (Score:3, Interesting)
The cost of music... (Score:2, Interesting)
I still, suprisingly buy music. I do too, also pirate some, but they are deleted in short order. It's the nature of the industry nowadays -- most artists know they won't last longer than a few years and the goal is to get every penny they can. Look at Metallica, now winding down their career (because it was downhill anyway) -- they started out singing against the 'man', 'halls of justice painted green, money talkin', and then use the same method they preached against to get damages awarded because they don't want to tour as much and have real shitty music they now sell.
But I digress... the music industry can't demand money for what people don't want to pay. Everybody now knows it doesn't cost $15 to make and package a CD, especially with the explosion in technology and the price cuts it has brought for the creation and distribution of everything. When a CD costs pennies to make and distribute, all you are saying is that, when customers don't want to pay the money to buy a CD with 1 good song on it, and further, don't want to pay $1 for a single song because it's missing a 'hard' copy and isn't really a discount well... you are being stubborn and you are going to get nailed. And the industry is getting nailed, by piraters everywhere. If music labels started doing a 'LaunchCast' type service (which I *love*), then all would be well. You subscribe monthly for say, $10.00, and people download and listen to all the music they want.
To infinity and beyond! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:"Artists" share at least equal blame (Score:3, Interesting)
www.iuma.com
www.magnatune.com
the ONLY new music I have bought over the past 12 months has been from artist on those sties.
RIAA artists I like? I buy only USED cd's.
buying Used CD's is the best way of kicking the RIAA and those that love them in the nuts.
Buy Used CD's only if it is not an Indie artist.
What would be nice (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What I don't understand is... (Score:2, Interesting)
His older movies are copyright, and should be public domain by now, but noone but Disney would ever be able to use the image of Mickey Mouse in any derivative work.
Re:Not at all surprising (Score:3, Interesting)
An artist who would like their works to be made publicly available over the internet would have to publish a list specifying what works are available.
Yes, there will still be problems, copyright violators, and even people who will insist it is their right to make copies of any and all possible works, regardless of the copyright holder's opinion.
-Rusty
Re:What the hell (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What I don't understand is... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What I don't understand is... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What the hell (Score:3, Interesting)
Part of the idea of capitalism is that people should buy the products that generate the most value for them. But with music, that's paradoxical, because until you've heard a song you don't know how much you like it; and once you have heard it, you've already consumed entertainment value from it.
If someone was brought up in a vacuum, they'd try randomly until they hit on an artist they like and then just keep buying stuff by that artist - no point taking risks with their money. Yet if they get info from anywhere else, payola comes in.
Re:All copyrights need to die (Score:3, Interesting)
Huh? There's incentive to grow FOOD, it's called human metabolism.
there was no incentive to say good things unless can control your speech
This is false. There is incentive to say good things without control, but there's MORE incentive to say things when there is control.
But the Renaissance happened without copyrights, so why can't the information age?
The reasoning expressed here is a fallacy, and ignores the massive changes that have occurred in the 400 or so years since the Rennaisance. First and foremost being that you could not get copies of an artists work. You could possibly have gotten moderate reproductions, but I imagine they'd have been expensive (people like to be paid for their work! Go figure!) and hard to come by.
So rather than being an equivalence relationship, copyrights are more like a form of censorship.
Once in the distant past. Copyrights are not granted to those who won't print bad things about the government. They're granted to everyone without respect to the subject.
people who copy are slandered with names such as thief and pirate
True, those aren't the right words. I prefer freeloader and warez kiddies. I have yet to meet anyone who loves downloading anything and everything instead of paying for it that doesn't fit in one of those categories.
these verbal assaults hide a cruel lie, the one that says - "copyrights benefit creative people"
Oh but it does! But as we've seen the laws need reform. This entire paragraph falls under this necessity.
and massive anti-trust behavior in the software industry
I think you mean "massively monopolistic behavior" or "increasingly trust-like behavior" since anti-trust would imply there was actually diversity keeping things shaken up.
well "how will we make money without copyrights?" Like a disingenuous thief asking "how will I feed my children without old ladies to mug?"
Oh, so now we're equating people who want to make money off the things they create with people who brutalize others and take. This makes no sense.
So say we abolish copyright. What then?
The number of creative works, good or bad, would trickle to a crawl. How many people contribute to GPL software because of the assurance provided by the license that their work won't be taken and sold back to them?
What about New Line Cinema, who put up the funding for Lord of the Rings? They'd never have put up the money if copyright wasn't available and rightly so, since all it'd take is one leak and they'd be ROYALLY FUCKED since every dvd producer and theater could show it without paying them any money.
And all authors would be fucked, since publishers would exploit a lack of copyright and never pay them. We'd be like Hong Kong, where bootleggers make it almost impossible for acts to make any money whatsoever by selling copies of cds for $1.
Until you can find a way to give people an incentive to create with the possibility that their work will be taken and sold and distributed without any compensation for them, the system will stay the same. The current system CAN be fixed, which you disagree with but I don't see why, and it needs to be but a complete abolishment of the system would do -far- more damage.
Re:What I don't understand is... (Score:5, Interesting)
Disney played very well on the copyright instrument, grabbing everything as soon as it was free of charge and put their own version in place, for which the copyright should never ever expire.
Re:What I don't understand is... (Score:2, Interesting)
I mean, I know why -- but is this unreasonable from anyone's viewpoint who doesn't charge $13.99 for a CD?