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

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

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

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

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.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

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.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

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.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

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.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

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.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

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.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

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.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

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.

[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.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

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

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

"...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.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

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