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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

#101

Post by gjm11 »

giggles_giggles wrote: post #57
ModernMech wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last year, the senate called their bill that would strip millions of healthcare the "Better Care Reconciliation Act"

"Reconciliation" seems to be the choice euphemism for budget cuts. I was reviewing some legislation ( https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/115/sconres36/text ) recently which failed to pass (budget slashing proposed by Rand Paul) and noticed that almost the entire text of the bill itself is "X Reconciliation", "Y Reconciliation".

Isn't that just because it used the process whose name is "reconciliation", which allows certain kinds of legislation to make its way through the Senate and the House with simple majorities and thus avoid filibustering?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconciliation_(United_States_...

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

#102

Post by kd5bjo »

infogulch wrote: post #38
stochastic_monk wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There has got to be a way of preventing "bundling". Bundling unrelated laws together is the cause of so much strife. Tacking shitty laws onto good ones, sneaking in some obscure clause that gives some senator a tax break that nobody noticed or they ignore because they want the rest of the bill, a highly favorable bi-partisan bill turned into a partisan issue because a clause that furthers the interests of the party t…

Lots of stuff [1] is passed in a batched consensus process, where any member can have one of the consensus items separated into a separate vote. You could extend this idea by letting a sub majority (1/3 maybe) split bills apart to be voted on separately.

[1] Ratifying the previous day's minutes, for example

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

#103

Post by chimeracoder »

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.

> Gotta love corrupt America.

Ah yes, as opposed to all the other developed European countries, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc., which all signed the TPP/TTIP, which contains similar massive copyright extensions.

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

#104

Post by chimeracoder »

ModernMech wrote: post #49
gnode wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

> In most cases land is fungible. Err, there's a reason the first three rules of real estate are 1. location 2. location 3. location The key thing about land is that it's unique, there is no other place on the entire planet identical to the place you're standing. There may be similar places, and that may be fine enough for some people. But plenty of wars have been fought over a particular piece of land. Just ask the…

> Just ask the Palestinians if land is fungible.

That analogy would only make sense if Palestinians were being offered similarly-sized and similarly-resourced land, to compensate for what was taken away from them at the beginning of the Nakba 70 years ago.

Except, they're not. The land was seized, with no new land provided in return. Over time, more and more has been occupied and taken away from Palestine.

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

#105

Post by MichaelGG »

icebraining wrote: post #64
dublinben wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a lawyer, but retroactive copyright extensions seem to me like they should be unconstitutional. It's logically impossible to "promote the progress of science and useful arts" by dead creators after their works have already been published by extending their copyrights. These laws should only be able to apply to new works going forward.

Well, it's not like 1972 was centuries ago; not all artists working back then are dead, and some are still working (e.g. Lionel Richie).

At this point, it's unlikely he or any other artist will release more music in the 1900s or even the 2000-2017 period.

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

#106

Post by eilyra »

Yetanfou wrote: post #37

The main motivation for extending copyright 'till the cows come home is most likely to keep material from becoming public domain and thereby from making sure it doesn't compete with the latest thrash the industry is producing. If their latest auto-tuned plastic one-hit wonder had to compete against a wealth of free-as-in-beer music the risk would be for the latter to become popular among the cool kids. No free music…

That makes me wonder, is there already something akin to Project Gutenberg but for music rather than books? Would be interesting to browse.

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

#107

Post by jackhack »

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).

Good luck. We can't get them to stop ignoring wide swaths of the Constitution. Even if it were to pass, I wouldn't hold my breath hoping they would begin obeying some minor procedural rule.

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

#108

Post by mywittyname »

rhino369 wrote: post #5

Extending copyright long after the life of an artist is bad economics. Because of the value of future money any revenue from future sales 30+ is essentially worthless now. So it doesn’t induce people to create more works of art and entertainment.

I agree it's bad economics, but not for the same reason. I think it's bad economics because it prevents cheap/free access to a huge corpus of media. This provides a barrier to entry for startups and entrepreneurs.

I've heard it claimed that Google could have never been started in Europe due to their copyrights laws being so onerous.

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

#109

Post by mywittyname »

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.

> Having the State send men with guns in response to that action is a highly artificial deprivation of that natural right.

Pack animals will do the same. If you attempt to take their property, the leader (State) will likely engage with you.

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

#110

Post by kevin_b_er »

ScottBurson wrote: post #83
btown wrote: post #42

The linked Lawrence Lessig op-ed [0] makes reference to a Supreme Court case he argued, where the 70-year version of this law was upheld. Luckily, unlike the sound recordings in question, Supreme Court oral arguments are available to posterity unencumbered, under a legal framework that encourages small, innovative providers like oyez.org to deliver them to the public. Here's the argument in question: https://www.oyez…

Here's what the Constitution says: Article I Section 8. Clause 8 – Patent and Copyright Clause of the Constitution. [The Congress shall have power] “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” So, what is a "limited" time? The current trend seems to be toward considering any mathematically…

Quoting corrupt congresswoman Mary Bono: "Actually, Sonny wanted the term of copyright protection to last forever. I am informed by staff that such a change would violate the Constitution. I invite all of you to work with me to strengthen our copyright laws in all of the ways available to us. As you know, there is also Jack Valenti's proposal for term to last forever less one day. Perhaps the Committee may look at that next Congress."

They want copyright forever. They have the entitlement to think it should be forever.

Since those in power no longer respect it being for a limited time, I put forth the "exclusive rights" should not be respected either. I do not consider or respect any copyrights held by Mary Bono as a result.

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