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All sound recordings prior to 1923 will enter the US public domain in 2022

publicdomainreview.org

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Re: All sound recordings prior to 1923 will enter the US public domain in 2022

#21

Post by vmception »

mattl wrote: post #15
sovnade wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there's plenty of things made 10 years ago that are still very relevant and still generating money for the creators. I think that's the concern.

Yeah. New Order are still making good money from Blue Monday from 1983, and clearly there’s a lot of interest in The Beatles still. Maybe a shorter period of time with an option to extend it like a snooze feature on an alarm clock.

The option to extend it being priced by the royalties collected and requiring substantial accounting of such.

Patents, for example, have maintenance fees that are quite high. So even that 20 year length is not really automatic and guaranteed, while already seen as problematically long to many.

Re: All sound recordings prior to 1923 will enter the US public domain in 2022

#22

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

mattl wrote: post #4
marcodiego wrote: post #2

99 years to enter public domain... I don't think this is fair.

What do you think is reasonable? 14? 24? 50?

Life of the author+0 years.

Most people expect to inherit money and property from their parents but not to be paid for work their parents did years ago. I don't see why children of authors should have different expectations.

Re: All sound recordings prior to 1923 will enter the US public domain in 2022

#23

Post by jimbob45 »

mattl wrote: post #4
marcodiego wrote: post #2

99 years to enter public domain... I don't think this is fair.

What do you think is reasonable? 14? 24? 50?

IMHO you have to start with the justification.

The previous justification was to incentivize creators by protecting their financial interests and the interests of their offspring. It’s very clear to see that those interests are no longer being met when you sell your blockbuster song to a record company for $500.

IMHO make copyright non-transferable and make corporate copyright 14 years with an application to double. That way it works for the little guy without big guys abusing it (e.g. Disney).

Re: All sound recordings prior to 1923 will enter the US public domain in 2022

#24

Post by jedimastert »

phkahler wrote: post #8

Does this offer a sort of land-grab opportunity where anyone who has an original recording can remaster it, convert to mp3, then claim copyright over that "transformation" of the original?

To answer your question specifically, no. A derivative work needs to contain newly created/copyrightable material for the work itself to be copyrightable

For more general answers, see this pamphlet from the US copyright office

https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ14.pdf

Re: All sound recordings prior to 1923 will enter the US public domain in 2022

#25

Post by loceng »

ncallaway wrote: post #9
mattl wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think is reasonable? 14? 24? 50?

The original Copyright Act of 14 years, with an option to extend an additional 14 years, seems reasonable to me.

I've liked the suggestion of an increasing annual cost, perhaps double, every year past a certain baseline - so if the work is valuable enough, productive financially, then the owners can afford to retain/maintain full control over it.

Re: All sound recordings prior to 1923 will enter the US public domain in 2022

#26

Post by aqme28 »

foolfoolz wrote: post #19
marcodiego wrote: post #2

99 years to enter public domain... I don't think this is fair.

i think this is fair and we will likely see it extended further. the media works of today cost way more than they did before. some songs cost millions to produce. some movies hundreds of millions. some video games billions of dollars. and the longevity of media has increased over time. we may not watch much 1920s movies but we do watch movies from the 50s and 60s. and i think recent movies will last even longer since…

Why is the cost of media a major factor on whether or not it is "fair"?

Ostensibly, the point of these restrictions is to incentivize the people who make IP.

But no one actually considers revenue 99 years into the future, so it doesn't work as an incentive.

Re: All sound recordings prior to 1923 will enter the US public domain in 2022

#27

Post by DenisM »

mattl wrote: post #4
marcodiego wrote: post #2

99 years to enter public domain... I don't think this is fair.

What do you think is reasonable? 14? 24? 50?

Copyright should be taxed every year based on the cumulative earnings for the first 10 years.

This allows the rights holders to milk the bulk of the profit and yet quickly pass the orphaned works to the public domain - both benefitting the development of arts and sciences as stipulated by the US constitution.

Heck, even taxing works for $1 a piece per year would free up a huge number of orphans.

Re: All sound recordings prior to 1923 will enter the US public domain in 2022

#28

Post by dahart »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #11
mattl wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think is reasonable? 14? 24? 50?

Maybe 10 years. We are moving at breakneck speed in just about every corner, but copyright protections. A decade is forever in today's world.

Is 10 years enough protection for the source code of a startup? Sometimes it takes longer than that to break even…

All law moves slowly. The law is supposed to move slowly, that’s (mostly) a feature, not a bug. You don’t want the existing laws to change every year, driving would be more of a nightmare than it already is.

Copyright was originally about protecting a creator’s ability to make some money from their works. Despite the fact it was extended in part to help Disney make money forever, we should still have some protection for artists and small businesses, right? We don’t want to shorten the copyright term just because NPM has a lot of churn, do we? That doesn’t seem like a good reason.

Re: All sound recordings prior to 1923 will enter the US public domain in 2022

#29

Post by jcranmer »

mattl wrote: post #4
marcodiego wrote: post #2

99 years to enter public domain... I don't think this is fair.

What do you think is reasonable? 14? 24? 50?

One of the rights that copyright protects is the right to make derivative works--such as sequels and film adaptations. If you consider that someone like Terry Pratchett can productively write a literary universe for decades, it feels to me like the best answer is around 30-50 years.

Re: All sound recordings prior to 1923 will enter the US public domain in 2022

#30

Post by ncallaway »

loceng wrote: post #25
ncallaway wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original Copyright Act of 14 years, with an option to extend an additional 14 years, seems reasonable to me.

I've liked the suggestion of an increasing annual cost, perhaps double, every year past a certain baseline - so if the work is valuable enough, productive financially, then the owners can afford to retain/maintain full control over it.

Really, one of the major issues for old and abandoned work is that it can be impossible to figure out who the rights holders are for a particular work.

A step of active renewal by the rights holder would at least create a public registry of the current owner for a particular right.

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