Notes from a very small island

I am with you. 50 years rights is more than long enough to incentivise creators to create things.

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wellinghall.livejournal.com

If 50 years is long enough for songs, is 75 years too long for books?

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Yes, I think so. If it's not selling well after a few decades then it never will; if it is, then you've had plenty of remuneration for writing it.

Subject of course to exceptional situations, but then hard cases make bad law.

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Yes, I think 75 years is too long.

I really don't like the idea of charging for ideas, and only reluctantly have to agree that you need to give creators some sort of incentive for their work. I think that ideas should probably have a fairly short lifespan as the private property of their creators, and then they should all have to go Open Source or transfer to a fairly generous creative commons licence, or something like that.

I also dislike the practice of plant patenting, essential though it is to the nursery trade. It seems fundementally wrong to me that people should be able to patent the DNA of a living thing.

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I don't think that you are charging for ideas; you are charging for work and the reality that someone is a partner in that work long after their contribution has ended. Many writers - and performers, for that matter - are in an extremely vulnerable financial position; royalties are welcome things.

However, I was unhappy about the extension of the fifty-year limit with the printed word and would only support the extension of music copyright protection on the basis of equality with the written word.

I dislike plant patenting or anything which suggests DNA can be private property, too.

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Many people in all fields of life are in vulnerable financial positions and have to do work they don't like because they cannot get work they do like. That's life. Books that are hard to get hold of that are in copyright don't get reissued or made available online. Books that are out of copyright get circulated (and will increasingly be circulated more and more) via non-traditional channels and are available to more people.

I think that writing gets special protection because it has traditionally been the preserve of 'vulnerable' educated middle-class intellects, and I can't really see the justification for that.

I don't think anyone has the right to sit on their copyright work like a chicken on a long-addled egg.

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Most of these writers are doing work they don't like. I have seen the letters, believe me. Their work is often being made use of by people who are far more secure than they are.

The struggle over copyright predates the emergence of the middle-class intellectual as a stereotype, though I don't remember the details; there was a landmark case in the late eighteenth century which set a precedent for authors maintaining a share in their work, as until then copyrights were bought outright (which remained a predominant pattern throughout the nineteenth century in some contexts) and if successful were then traded, often in shares, between the dominant printer-publishers without the creators benefiting further.

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I too have had to write stuff I don't want to write, don't enjoy writing, and don't find particularly interesting, for someone else's benefit. I just don't think it's so uniquely painful (or valuable) that 50 years later the writer still deserves compensation!

I bow to your knowledge on the emergence of copyright, but I don't see anything there to change my view of the current situation.

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It's possible to argue that copyright emerges from a situation related to the nature of the technology used to disseminate the work. I think that despite the technological changes related to the internet it's still valid for a writer and their publisher to agree terms for the distribution of their work as a marketable product which will protect the author's interest for a set period of time.

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I'm happy to agree to a 'set period of time'. I just think 75 years is a bit silly, and that even 50 years is a bit cheeky really.

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alitalf.livejournal.com

Although (below) I guessed at a particular period of copyright as most fair, or perhaps better least unfair, it does seem to me that one has to positively make an argument as to why something should remain in copyright after the author's death.

However my feeling is that it doesn't take much in the way of special pleading for copyright not to expire during the life of the author - at least if vested in the author.

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For 'printer-publisher' in my last comment, read 'bookseller-publisher'.

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"...you are charging for work and the reality that someone is a partner in that work long after their contribution has ended."

How do you see that? I'd have thought that to be contradictory.

I see the copyright period as being a chance to actually get paid for the work you've done: the book I just wrote is worth say £10,000, but that's only going to come from sales over a period of time. I should therefore be given say 10 or 20 years to make those sales, and if I can't do that then it's my own look-out. I don't have to publish, if I don't want the copyright to expire. After that initial time, there are two possibilities:

1) Nobody cares any more, and sales become negligible. Copyright's not doing me any good, the work should go into the public domain so anyone can develop it, should they want to; or

2) Everyone's really keen on it, and sales are still healthy. Copyright's doing me a lot of good, but it's injuring everyone else who'd like to join in. The work should go into the public domain so other people can have a go at developing what is obviously a relatively important part of the public culture.

As for my financial security, I should either be writing more books or saving for my retirement.

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I think we are saying the same thing, but I immediately express myself through metaphor.

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wellinghall.livejournal.com

What are the limitations on performing songs that are in copyright?

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PRS will come and eat you if you do it live.

FACT will come and hang you as a pirate if you record it.

SWMBO will complain that she can't think with that racket going on if you do it in the shower.

Not worth the candle :-(

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ladyofastolat.livejournal.com

Curses! LJ ate my comment, even though I put it on the clipboard! Let's see if I can reproduce it.

I think that books are different from songs. A novel is a story told in exactly chosen words. Copyright covers the exact reproduction of those words. (It is a lot more fuzzy on fanfic (i.e. taking characters or situations created by the author, and exploring them in your own way.) It certainly doesn't cover someone recounting the whole plot of the novel to their friend.)

Songs have a sort of double existence, at least with today's pop music. There is the song itself (a line of melody with attached words), and there is the specific recording of that song, complete with arrangement etc. Should a different law cover someone using an actual recording without permission, and someone interpreting the song in their own way, singing it with two friends in a pub? Unlike novels, songs positively invite people to interpret them in their own way. You can learn a song in minutes, and sing it in the shower; you can't do the same to novels. People do cover versions of songs, but you don't get cover versions of novels. A novel just is; a song is much more fluid.

I think there is a good argument for having a much looser concept on intellectual property over the song itself, than over the specific recording. After all, who are we hurting if we sit in a pub and sing Cumberland Gap? If anything, we're providing a free advert for the song, and encouraging people present to go out and buy a "best of Lonnie Donnegan" album. We've bought a good few CDs purely because they contain songs we've previously heard sung during informal singarounds.

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PRS, of course, work on the basis that we are hurting Lonnie Donegan. For every person who thinks "Gosh, I'd have bought a copy of that but I don't need to now because I can hear it being sung in the pub", Lonnie Donegan loses out because his shade has to see his relatives go without the royalties they would otherwise have received.

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ladyofastolat.livejournal.com

They seem to be very stupid. They seem to work very differently from everyone else in marketing, advertising etc. Everyone else works on the assumption that publicity is good; exposure is good. If someone creates a musical jingle for their product, and hear children singing it in the playground, they think "Great! Job done!" They don't think "Nooo!!! It's infringing my copyright." Companies pay lots of money to get their brand of breakfast cereal featured in the background in a movie. The music industry wants the movie to pay them for the privilege of using their song. The cereal manufacturers know that having their product used in a film will boost sales, but the music people don't seem to have realised this rather obvious fact.

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kargicq.livejournal.com

Yup, they are completely stupid. Copyright protection is way too long and way too all-embracing. I am also not even convinced that intellectual property in general is a good thing -- I once read a rather striking article about how 19th century Germany (I think, or was it Switzerland?) became a hothouse of innovation precisely BECAUSE there was no IP protection, and so all these ideas were free to bounce around and inspire people, instead of being locked up in one company.

Neuromancer

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rustica.livejournal.com

Iawtc. It's a complex subject and, like you, I'm not prepared to say it's a *bad* thing, certainly not in all situations, though neither am I convinced it's always good. I think that there has to be a balance between remunerating an author/artist/whatever, and the recognition that their output passes into public culture and at some point into public ownership. I definitely don't think that copyright should be extended. If someone's had 50 or 75 years of royalties from something, that really should be enough. For heavens sake! They knew these were the terms at the beginning.

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alitalf.livejournal.com

If someone's had 50 or 75 years of royalties from something, that really should be enough. Quite right!

Although slightly off topic, patents give me cause for concern, and I would be very unhappy if the term of patents were to be extended. Already companies with large teams of lawyers are patenting obvious things that people have been doing for years, and nobody (other than another large company) can afford to fight them.

At least this abuse of the patent system, worse in the USA than the UK (so far) has a time limit, and as yet nobody believes that they can patent the exact same thing that has already been patented before. I mean, can you imagine the lack of development of technology if a substantial royalty had to be paid to a firm of lawyers for every use of the wheel? OTOH maybe we would have had antigravity now because of the problems that introduced!

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I think this is taking things a little too far the other way. No protection at all makes it really easy to be creative and innovative, but it does reduce the incentive to be so. Why should I write a book if someone else can get the money for publishing it?

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alitalf.livejournal.com

Well, Shakespeare is still commercially viable, but if that were in copyright it is vanishingly unlikely that anyone would be better off except a firm of lawyers somewhere, and everyone else would be worse off as a result. As someone said, hard cases make bad law, and I don't think that any general extension of copyright is justified by the fact that there is a case where one might wish it to be longer.

The dead ducks commercially might, in a few cases, not be dead ducks if they were in the public domain. I can see no justification for generally longer copyright after the death of the writer.

I know of no logical reasoning that says that a particular time is correct, it has to be a matter of what one thinks is vaguely fair on average. It seems to me unfair if copyright did not last for the life of the artist, and also unfair if it lasted forever. My guess at fair would be that the length of a long life OR the life of the writer or artist, whichever is the longer. Say 90 years - most people don't last that long, a few do, and a very few last to 100. To make it clear, that means that if someone published something at age 40 and died at age 80, it would go out of copyright 50 years after they died, not that it would last 90 years after they died. In some cases that may seem too short; in others far too long, but I can't see a way to make it perfect.

Of course, it would almost never happen that the life of the artist would be the limiting factor on expiry, but it would seem harsh if, exceptionally, someone who lived to 110 and needed the royalties to pay the nursing home bills had their source of income taken away. However, if life extension to unimaginable ages were developed, I might change my view about copyright lasting the life of the writer. If you live to 1000 in good health, the general culture might reasonably hope to be able to get more access to your work, under one of the GPL ideas.

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"Thinking about book copyright which (I think) is currently at 75 years after death or first publication. I don't think I would be happy for that to be reduced.

(Assuming I'm right) The Lord of the Rings will go out of copyright in 2048: 41 years time. I strongly suspect that Tolkien will remain quite warm (if not hot) property then. At which point all and sundry would be able to do what they wanted. I'm not convinced that would be a good thing; we've seen the dumb merchandising that came on the back of the Jackson films."

This is a two-edged sword. Copyright on LotR lasting another 41 years seems to me to be absurd. The Tolkien Estate having control of the copyrights limits the flow of dross, but it also limits the flow of good stuff. Why should people whose only relation to the work is a blood relationship to the actual creator have a complete veto over how it is developed? You assume that they will only be producing worthwhile new products, but why should this be so? And why is a flow of dross a bad thing - you can always ignore what you don't like.

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Fair enough, but how to eliminate the dross? Put the property in the hands of someone who's had nothing to do with the creation of it and is only interested in financial return? Hmm.

This line of argument starts to lead towards some sort of abitration of good taste. "No, you can't publish that book, I think it's rubbish. Here, read this instead." Why not just give wider powers to the BBFC (and set up equivalents for books and so on)?

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OK, but then you're saying that people are allowed to make good artistic works, but not to profit from them. So the creative types involved with Tolkien's works get nothing, but the non-creative Tolkien estate make money. This is hardly inspiring stuff :-(

Besides, we're really only talking about length of the restriction. I'm saying things should be opened up fairly quickly; you seem to be saying they should be, but, er, not yet, maybe later. Although to be honest the thrust of your arguments seems to be more that control should always stay with the original creator or the people he designates as trustees: any termination of the copyright at any point could be viewed as deleterious.

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