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Congress wants to extend the copyright on some sound recordings to 144 years

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Re: Congress wants to extend the copyright on some sound recordings to 144 years

#21

Post by rayiner »

Strang wrote: post #18
rayiner wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copyright is about the least artificial monopoly that exists. An artificial monopoly is the government sending men with guns to keep bigger stronger men than me off my land. It's a chunk of dirt that existed millions of years before I was born and will continue to exist millions of years after I'm dead, but the government allows me to call it "mine." That's as artificial as it gets, but we call it "natural rights." A…

That's a very unconventional view. I'd argue that as presented it is based on an over-simplification of copyright. Specifically, "something that didn't exist before the person who created it" and "everyone can have as much of it as they want so long as they're willing to create their own" do not seem to accurately describe copyright law to me.

I don't think it's unconventional. Almost nobody outside certain circles cares about the "public domain." It's a romantic idea that has little relevance.

And why do you think that description of copyright law is inaccurate? Copyright protects concrete expression, not abstract ideas, and independent creation is a defense to copyright infringement. How many sci-fi books are basically identical and rehash the same tropes? That's not copyright infringement. It's only infringement if you actually copy someone else's work.

Re: Congress wants to extend the copyright on some sound recordings to 144 years

#23

Post by SomewhatLikely »

saosebastiao wrote: post #7

What's crazy to me is that this legislation really only needs one person to get it there, because Congress is nothing more than a club of mutual backscratchers. Why focus on real issues when you can spend all your your time acquiring IOUs that will eventually pay off big?

And for long term issues like this you can wait around years until you have a favorable Congress to pass these kinds of legislation.

Re: Congress wants to extend the copyright on some sound recordings to 144 years

#24

Post by gnode »

rayiner wrote: post #8
Clubber wrote: post #2

It's funny that the senator's party's platform is based around little to no government regulation and healthy capitalistic competition. Here he is granting an artificial monopoly for 7 generations. I'll bet his hands were well greased. Gotta love corrupt America.

Copyright is about the least artificial monopoly that exists. An artificial monopoly is the government sending men with guns to keep bigger stronger men than me off my land. It's a chunk of dirt that existed millions of years before I was born and will continue to exist millions of years after I'm dead, but the government allows me to call it "mine." That's as artificial as it gets, but we call it "natural rights." A…

I don't think it's sensible to refer to all ownership of land as monopolistic. In most cases land is fungible. There are many landowners in my town of plots of land which are largely interchangeable. Saying someone has a monopoly on their specific plot of land is about as relevant as saying someone has a monopoly on a specific cheeseburger. If one party were to own all the land in a particular region, like a feudal lord, that may be considered monopolistic.

The case with copyright is that copyrighted works are by definition not fungible; if you create a trivially similar work, you violate the copyright.

Re: Congress wants to extend the copyright on some sound recordings to 144 years

#25

Post by stochastic_monk »

rayiner wrote: post #13
JackCh wrote: post #6

> Music Modernization Act I don't know if/how it could legally be done, but I'd love to see "cute" names for laws barred from use in Congress. Refer to them all by number not brand names dreamed up by marketing professionals to make the proposed law seem unassailable ( "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act" aka USA PATRIOT Act).

The focus of the act is actually on modernizing licensing for streaming: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/congress-is-giving-m... .

The important thing here is that primarily good MMA has been bundled with the CLASSICS Act. From the EFF commentary:

"The CLASSICS Act gives nothing back to the public. It doesn’t increase access to pre-1972 recordings, which are already played regularly on Internet radio. And it doesn’t let the public use these recordings without permission any sooner. While some recording artists and their heirs will receive money under the act, the main beneficiaries will be recording companies, who will control the use of classic recordings for another fifty years. Important recordings from the 1920s, 30s, and 40s won’t enter the public domain until 2067. And users of recordings that are already over 90 years old will face the risk of federal copyright’s massive, unpredictable penalties."

This is much, much more about record labels getting money rather than creators of content. The industry already heavily rewards purveyors rather than generators; if anything, this makes things worse.

Re: Congress wants to extend the copyright on some sound recordings to 144 years

#27

Post by gnode »

rayiner wrote: post #21
Strang wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very unconventional view. I'd argue that as presented it is based on an over-simplification of copyright. Specifically, "something that didn't exist before the person who created it" and "everyone can have as much of it as they want so long as they're willing to create their own" do not seem to accurately describe copyright law to me.

I don't think it's unconventional. Almost nobody outside certain circles cares about the "public domain." It's a romantic idea that has little relevance. And why do you think that description of copyright law is inaccurate? Copyright protects concrete expression, not abstract ideas, and independent creation is a defense to copyright infringement. How many sci-fi books are basically identical and rehash the same trope…

> It's only infringement if you actually copy someone else's work.

This is inaccurate. Copyright has been extended to cover fictional characters for instance.

Consider that at the copyright term of 144 years proposed, the character of Count Dracula would still be under copyright, and not freely usable for artistic works.

Re: Congress wants to extend the copyright on some sound recordings to 144 years

#29

Post by mijamo »

rayiner wrote: post #19
barrkel wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't accept that for a moment. Monopoly over land predates humans, as any observation of territorial creatures will let you know.

Territorial creatures have possession, not property, which is completely different. Bashing someone's head in and taking their property is natural right. Having the State send men with guns in response to that action is a highly artificial deprivation of that natural right.

I think you should read about natural rights. The traditional natural righta are life, liberty, and property, which is the opposite of what you describe. And natural rights only exist in an organized society, they are just the limits of what a human should give in its social contract with the society.

Re: Congress wants to extend the copyright on some sound recordings to 144 years

#30

Post by WiseWeasel »

JackCh wrote: post #6

> Music Modernization Act I don't know if/how it could legally be done, but I'd love to see "cute" names for laws barred from use in Congress. Refer to them all by number not brand names dreamed up by marketing professionals to make the proposed law seem unassailable ( "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act" aka USA PATRIOT Act).

The Orwell Act: Proposed legislation names shall henceforth be limited to the following verbs and adjectives:

verbs: prevent, promote

adjectives: good, ungood

Edit: More seriously, laws should be named with the same rules that apply to good commit messages, concisely describing the change being made. Or maybe they're more like pull requests... point is, you should be able to go down the list of them and get a good feel for the activity.

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