Intellectual prorpety and copyright

[king_pellinor]

Splitting this off from LadyofAstolat's journal, as it;'s not really on topic there and she said she didn't want to get into it too much:

I see that there's a motion (presumably an Early-Day Motion) in Parliament which says:

"This House notes that 50 years ago Lonnie Donegan's Cumberland Gap was No. 1 in the charts for five weeks; is concerned that due to the present law governing payments for use of audio recordings this track will go out of copyright at the end of 2007 and that the family of Lonnie Donegan, who would have been 76 on 29 April, and the other performers will no longer receive any royalties, nor have any say in how this recording is used".

My response would be:

"I note that 50 years ago Lonnie Donegan's Cumberland Gap was No. 1 in the charts for five weeks; I am concerned that due to the present law governing payments for use of audio recordings this track will not go out of copyright until the end of 2007 and so even now the general public is unable to sing this song freely without getting permission, notwithstanding that Donegan himself is actually dead."

Let songs go into the public domain. If they're only sung by people at parties, or played as soundtracks to what are effectively historical documentaries, then they're not commercial any more. Stop treating them as if they are!

Do you know how many songs can't be sung freely because Cliff Richard owns the copyright? Neither do I, because they're dead ducks commercially and so no-one's paying attention any more!

Comments

[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.

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

"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.

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

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)?

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

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.

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

"There is also a big difference between commercial and non-commercial use. I believe that non-commercial use should be a lot freer than it currently is. That would, amongst other things, allow fan fiction writers more leeway to sub-sub-create within an author's sub-created world or using their characters. Publishing that sub-sub-created work for money, or selling merchandise based on that work, would be commercial and subject to the tighter commercial rules."

I agree with this. New works which derive from existing ones should not be covered by the artistic control aspect of copyright, though of course non-commercial distribution of the original should be controlled as it does have a direct negative effect on the copyright holder.