Can Beethoven send takedown requests? • Hacker News Board

Re: Can Beethoven send takedown requests?

#121

Post by xamuel » Fri, Aug 31, 2018, 1:39 PM UTC

dagw wrote: post #91

xamuel wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that like no-one would show up to a Paul McCartney concert if Beatles songs were public domain. In actuality, the examples you listed are especially painful because we could be enjoying incredible derivative works based on their music, if not for the stupid way copyright works.

Music is a bad example since the rights system around making covers is incredibly generous compared to other mediums. The fact that just about every Beatles song has a cover in just about every style bears witness to that.

The mashup "genre" currently is full of amateurs, because copyright law won't allow you to make money off it. Sampling is used to great effect by hip hop artists, but only in very limited ways because they have to negotiate expensive licenses each time. If not for copyright, we'd see amazing innovations.

To get an idea what would be possible, listen to the Beastie Boys album "Paul's Boutique", which has been called "The Sgt. Pepper of Hip Hop". It liberally samples all kinds of sources (including Beatles), and the results are amazing, even with that limited 1989 technology. Unfortunately, shortly after that album was released, legal precedents around music copyright doomed any similar works until copyright law changes.

Re: Can Beethoven send takedown requests?

#122

Post by kemonocode » Fri, Aug 31, 2018, 1:39 PM UTC

richrichardsson wrote: post #56

brann0 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide some proof that "pirating" (I hate that word) had severely diminished sold copies? And I don't mean all those "studies" based on the false premise that downloaded records are lost sales.

No I cannot, but conversely can you prove that is has not? All I can proffer is anecdote that as bandwidth and the ubiquity of Internet increased over the years, the sales of music via the label I'm involved with diminished. All the while our artists and the label itself became more and more popular, so it seems entirely counter inuitive that sales should have been dropping.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Does+piracy+hurt+sales%3F

Here you go.

Furthermore, it has been proven album sales are on the decline due to the meteoric rise of streaming: https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8092882/on-deman...

If that means lost revenue overall for label companies, well, ask yourself if you haven't had a broken business model all along to begin with and now it's when you're taking the hit.

Re: Can Beethoven send takedown requests?

#123

Post by visarga » Fri, Aug 31, 2018, 1:40 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #112

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Given how quickly music becomes "old" I don't understand why copyright needs to chain up music any longer than two decades You say that but the Beatles, Elvis, Beethoven, Pink Floyd, Michael Jackson are all artists that had their heyday 30-60 years ago and are still the top selling artists. A lot of them are dead now because of varying reasons, but some are still alive and kicking and giving new performances of the…

A lot of those people laying bricks are still around. Are you going to tell me they have no right to their own work anymore 20 years after they laid those bricks? After all they are still alive and kicking and people are still walking on those streets many years later. We 'knowledge workers' have it pretty easy compared to the people doing physical work. 30 years should be plenty for all media.

Different situation. Brick layers are getting their full salary when they work. Content creators don't have a salary, but a recurring revenue from sales.

Re: Can Beethoven send takedown requests?

#124

Post by Mindwipe » Fri, Aug 31, 2018, 1:47 PM UTC

mcny wrote: post #50

jpttsn wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A longer exclusivity term makes it possible to recoup more investment costs, for those who invest in artists. This theoretically enables larger investments that can support the artist further up front.

The main argument I can accept for copy right is that it allows for people to pool their tiny amount of money to vote for the kind of music they like so it is more democratic than a patron-focused model where authors and musicians would need to cater to a few patrons' tastes. However, even though most of the money remains concentrated at the top, we no longer have this problem. It is fairly easy to support your favor…

> Imagine the innovation at Spotify if there were no copyright!

None, because Spotify would go out of business overnight as people stole their source code.

Re: Can Beethoven send takedown requests?

#125

Post by sambull » Fri, Aug 31, 2018, 1:48 PM UTC

ObsoleteNerd wrote: post #107

dotancohen wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who was sending these notices? Sounds like perjury to me.

Welcome to the DMCA. It's as broken as copyright and causing quite serious stifling of young creators. It sometimes feels like it's used more for evil than for its legitimate purpose.

All these schemes are to stifle and own

Re: Can Beethoven send takedown requests?

#126

Post by jrochkind1 » Fri, Aug 31, 2018, 1:48 PM UTC

> However, I intended to release all of my videos under a free license, so that they could be used in the future for others to educate and inform students about these beautiful works. Even in cases where my defense to the ContentID claims were successful, the videos were not reverted to this free license, making it much more difficult for others to use and share these digitized works in the way I originally had intended.

If you don't own the copyright of the thing or have a license to it, how can you "release it under a license" any license at all?

Is the OP just not saying it clearly, and what they really wanted to do was to mark it as in the public domain?

Or does Youtube actually have no way to do this?

Our entire cultural practices, corporate policies, and software feature lists, are set up ignoring public domain use cases. People don't even realize how this stuff works legally, which doesn't help. But you can't release something under a license if you don't own it (or have a license to re/sub-license it).

Re: Can Beethoven send takedown requests?

#127

Post by tallanvor » Fri, Aug 31, 2018, 1:48 PM UTC

toong wrote: post #65

tallanvor wrote: post #24

It seems to me that a big part of the problem is that Google is focusing on this the wrong way. Rather than automatically assume that ContentID is correct and notifying the user, it should instead notify the supposed owner of the music, and let them decide whether or not to make a claim. If the "owner" makes too many false claims then they should be banned form the service.

I thought that was the way it works ? But they just hit the (virtual) "claim everything" button as fast as they can. Maybe the problem is that Google can't ban them from the service legally ?

I'm not sure. I thought companies uploaded their work and then the claims were basically automated. But admittedly I don't have experience in this area.

Regardless, we need to start seeing punishment for false claims. Under DMCA, wrongful claims could result in the claimants being charged with perjury, but obviously nobody is enforcing this part of it.

Re: Can Beethoven send takedown requests?

#128

Post by EADGBE » Fri, Aug 31, 2018, 1:48 PM UTC

zaphar wrote: post #77

richrichardsson wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I cannot, but conversely can you prove that is has not? All I can proffer is anecdote that as bandwidth and the ubiquity of Internet increased over the years, the sales of music via the label I'm involved with diminished. All the while our artists and the label itself became more and more popular, so it seems entirely counter inuitive that sales should have been dropping.

I would bet the drop in album sales is more likely due to the rise of Spotify and other streaming services than piracy.

CD sales have fallen since 2000. Spotify, in your example, came out 8 years later.

https://www.statista.com/chart/12950/cd-sales-in-the-us/

Conversely, Napster was released in 1999.

Re: Can Beethoven send takedown requests?

#129

Post by tekromancr » Fri, Aug 31, 2018, 1:48 PM UTC

adamc wrote: post #101

indigochill wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the gist of this, but I'm actually leaning towards a shorter copyright lifespan. Maybe 20? The reason being that I feel this better balances the need to benefit from your work (20 years is quite a while to be exclusively entitled to something) with the need for society to build on your work without threat of litigation. I feel 50 years benefits the former a bit too much at the expense of the latter. Just…

I can't see any reason to deny an author copyright during his or her lifetime. They wrote it. The public has no intrinsic right to take their stuff. In point of fact, some kinds of work depend on the longer payback period. Children's books, for example, don't usually earn so much initially, but successful ones can be dependable earners for a long time.

If we want to argue about intrinsic rights, though, you could also argue that there is no intrinsic right for an author of an intellectual work to have any ownership over it whatsoever once they share that idea with another person.

The fact that they have legal ownership of a work is a societal construct, enforced by government, to incentivise the creations of said works for the sake of the public good.

The notion of intellectual property, of ideas "belonging" to the first person who had them publicly, are a fairly recent invention in human history; and the notion of practically eternal copyrights held by immortal entities spanning multiple human lifetimes is an extremely recent invention.

As much as the capital-L Librarians like to jump up and down yelling "Property rights! Property rights!", those rights are only exist because there are folks with guns willing to use them to enforce those rights;

So with that in mind, the only thing I think worth arguing is what the terms of that deal should be. I am of the opinion that that the term of a copyright should be as short as possible, while still being long enough to incentivise creation. I think this was the original idea of the 20ish year copyright term. Personally, I think that the sooner a society can claim a work, and continue building off of it, the better.

Re: Can Beethoven send takedown requests?

#130

Post by bitofhope » Fri, Aug 31, 2018, 1:49 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #7

giancarlostoro wrote: post #4

Given how quickly music becomes "old" I don't understand why copyright needs to chain up music any longer than two decades (I'm being kinda generous, some songs are old after a few months / one to five years). I hate the state of copyrighted works. Movies can stay copyrighted for a good 40 to 50 years, anything else is crazy. Books maybe 50 years too, but again, it's just crazy and clear that the extended years of co…

> Given how quickly music becomes "old" I don't understand why copyright needs to chain up music any longer than two decades You say that but the Beatles, Elvis, Beethoven, Pink Floyd, Michael Jackson are all artists that had their heyday 30-60 years ago and are still the top selling artists. A lot of them are dead now because of varying reasons, but some are still alive and kicking and giving new performances of the…

I, for one, would say they should have no right to it.

Hell, everyone you mentioned became a millionaire during their career. If all of them stopped receiving royalties for any of their releases after one measly year, they'd have made more money than I'm ever likely to make. Superstars have most to lose in absolute terms if copyright got nerfed, but in relative terms they'd still do fine. Many of the most successful performers of the last century became multimillionaires before they even turned 20.

Monetary value and cultural value shouldn't be conflated. Folk music and Shakespeare plays are very popular and highly regarded despite being public domain. Not to mention that people actually make money with them.

Pink Floyd would make a mint by touring even if all their albums were in PD. You can start a Floyd cover band all you like but for some reason most fans would still prefer to see the genuine article.