From January 1st 2005 any recordings made on or prior to December 31 1954 will no longer be protected by UK copyright law. Record companies, artists and performers whose work falls into the public domain will no longer have the right to earn income from their work.

Is 50 years long enough or should copyright last forever?

I've seen Cliff Richard on TV moaning about this, may be because in a few years time a couple of his tracks will be expiring. Elvis, Rolling Stones and Beatles will be not long after.

I think it should last forever. A high proportion of today's so-called artists only survive by 'borrowing' old material. Can you imagine what it would be like if copyright was to run out on everything.

I think copyrights should last.

Although I am not a fan of Cliff Richard, I did agree with him when he said on TV earlier that it is outragous that under current law one of his early songs could be used on a porn video for example even though he is opposed to porn.

Under the current law in a few years Beatles songs could be played in porn videos, without permission.

Just think, in 30 years FkDonalds could use Smiths/Morrissey songs in their adverts (remixing them so it sounded as if they were singing "meat is NOT murder" if they wanted to)!

I think copyrite for music should not exist at all and all works should be the public domain.
As mentioned on an earlier thread David Bowie is all for this - and he has a bigger back catalogue than most to earn off!

The fact is that artists would still earn enourmous amounts of money from performing the songs live (if they can) and would still endorse an "official" release on CD which would earn them money on sales too.

If nothing else it would weed out the so called "artists" who are not in it for the music and cannot perform live.

Ok, I've amended the poll slightly.

Originally posted by kilauea
[B
The fact is that artists would still earn enourmous amounts of money from performing the songs live (if they can) and would still endorse an "official" release on CD which would earn them money on sales too.

If nothing else it would weed out the so called "artists" who are not in it for the music and cannot perform live. [/B]

I think this is a load of rubbish. What about an act who performs best under studio conditions and releases a cd of their music? Why should they be robbed of their work? Why should artists only have their work protected if they can perform live?:loopy:

Originally posted by Patchy
I think this is a load of rubbish. What about an act who performs best under studio conditions and releases a cd of their music? Why should they be robbed of their work? Why should artists only have their work protected if they can perform live?:loopy:

"an act who performs best under studio conditions"..

We talking about Milli Vanilli here are we?

As a copyright holder myself, make all copyrights last the lifetime of the originator plus 25 years.

This allows for the copyright owner to earn from it while they're alive (assuming, of course, people want to pay them for the rights of what they've done) and also a bit left over so that rights can be left as the estate of the the person when they die. The next generation then has 25 years to get off their arses and do something...:)

As for stuff going public domain, even in the PD an author would still have some rights. It's NOT the same as a work being declared out of copyright - it always amazes people that they can be sued for ripping off a Public Domain work.

David Bowie and similar artists will make lots of money out of existing subsidiary rights and such - and live performance, and public appearances, etc. What about people like John Williams? Star Wars theme? Whatever the erits of film and music it's a very recognisable, popular piece. Why shouldn't he be allowed to earn from it?

In the UK a work is copyright the author from the moment you create it in a tangible / playable form. If an artist wants to make their works public domain, copyleft (the Open Source wording for releasing stuff in to the wider arena), or whatever, they can do, providing they've not already signed away the rights in a contract.

For writers and composers who DON'T have the massive earning capacity of a Bowie or a Beatle, having a copyright that they can assign is an intellectual asset that they should be able to make money from.

I'm not sure what you do for a living, Kilauea, but I assume you like getting paid for it?

Joe

The whole copyright idea is unenforcable and archaic.
The system has been crumbling for years and is only getting worse now with piracy, MP3 downloading, fast home CD / DVD duplication etc.
some examples..

the gutenburg project seeks to archive books in the public domain. Recently it wanted to add "Gone with the Wind" as it is public domain now in Australia. However it ain't in the US and legal action was started (which cannot win btw).

Look at China for instance where the big console manufactures don't want to release hardware due to piracy concerns. Look at Russia with its piracy problems. Some countries just don't recognise it (copyright) and their goverments ain't helping.

Unless you can get a worlwide agreement on how copyright should run it will never stand up. And we now that ain't going to happen.

On the point specifically of music I believe anything that can be played out should be free - that is an ideal of mine and has nothing to do with what I or others make their money from. This doesn't stop anyone making cash from playing it live, from selling duplicates or from selling the written music. You will just have to do it better than everyone else.

Yes, it's not very enforcable but the bottom line is that without some degree of ocntrol the vast majority of artists would lose income big time unless some means were in place of protecting the creative works produced.

There's no need to tell me about Russia and soem other parts of the world - I've probably lost a good few hundred / few grand in bootleg book, article and software copies over the years.

"I believe anything that can be played out should be free - that is an ideal of mine and has nothing to do with what I or others make their money from. "

Well, once the people who try and make money from writing music get bored with not getting paid for what they do, the music, books, etc. will soon dry up. I can be better than anyone else I know, but why should I bother busting a gut spending a year writing a book if the first copy that gets sold gets copied several thousand times and sold for a fiver each, none of which I see?

As I said, I assume you like getting paid for what you do as your job. If I write a book I don't want to see someone being able to legally copy, distribute and make money from it without any recourse to me.

Joe

Joe I understand your predicament if you earn off copyright. But I am sure nothing I say on a sheffield forum will take any pennies out of your pocket ; )

I don't want to listen to music or read books by people who only did it for the money and the ieda that people will suddenly stop if copyright was abolished is nonense.
The true artists / authors / poets will still do it because that is what they are. And it will be more accessable to those who enjoy it. They simply need to find another way of making income. For instance you mentioned John Williams and the Star Wars music. I'm sure he was very well paid when he was commisioned and if there were no prospect of getting copyright afterwards would have been even better paid.
Same with yourself. If your current earnings are based on how many books sell then it *could* change and you just get a bigger up front fee to the first publisher.

Would authors get as much as they did before? Possibly not but its hard to say. I don't think we will see a huge public outcry about it though (as we didn't with miners, steel workers, fishermen when their livelyhoods were stopped completely).

Hmmmm....

Using John Williams was a bad example. Many composers and such for films - and quite a few script writers - get paid 'ponts' - they get a minimum wage and then get paid based on the profits of the film. So you may create a masterpiece but if teh film doesn't go in to profit you get paid squat. And if anyone can create a copy without paying a bean, those profits are not going to appear very quickly.

As for "true artists / authors / poets " doing it for the love - they still need to eat, pay mortgages and such. Being a 'true artist' doesn't mean you're immune to hunger and homelessness. You might do it for the love, as I do now, but a true artist wants to be able to carry on doing the work - and if they don't get a reasonable whack for it they'll HAVE to take time away from being creative to do the 'domestic crap' that most of us who write have to do to stay solvent.

People will stop producing not because they want to but because they have to - there are only so many hours in a day and if I don't get paid reasonably for the writing then I'll need to get paid for doing something else.

As for up front fees from publishers - why should they pay you a larger advance if they can't protect the work they print?

Advances for most authors are quite small compared to an average wage, unless you're a JK Rowling, Phillip Pullman, Tom Clancy, etc.

As for miners and such - well, been there and done that as well. My family come from a mining area and we were well stuffed 20 years ago.

A small project of mine at the moment is publishing some technical e-books. I've also got the copyrights on several of my books back from the publishers and would like to re-publish them, and also may be set up a small fiction imprint at some time. In other words provide a means by which authors can get their stuff out in to teh world. I'd expect to be able to make some money from that, assuming that the books I publish are good enough.

However, removing copyright and other protections will mean that as soon as a book is out there, in whatever form, it can be copied and re-published by some third world press at a fraction of the cost, with no pay to teh author who produced it.

Yes, we could bring the prices down ourselves, but there comes a point when the economics of most book publishing will stop you. Your ideal is a fine one to have, but it will be the end of many publishers and authors working lives. I didn't support the destruction of our fisheries, mines and steel works and I'm damned if I'll be supporting the destruction of our intellectual industries.

Joe

I wouldn't expect you to support it Joe, especially in your situation. But you are still assuming that there is no other way to make a living off IP other than through copyright (i.e. offical endorsments, public appearances etc).

The fact is as an industry publishers (who by the way rip us off more than the bloody petrol industry so I won't have any sympathy for them) need to start thinking about it. As technology advances, copyrighting becomes less and less profitable. If they cannot come up with new business models they will suffer. I would stay out of e-publishing too as many have been broken on those rocks already - once something is in digital format no lawyer in the world can stop it been copied and distributed via p2p networks to anyone who wants it - but that is a bit off thread.

Already look at Apples and Sony's and Microsofts feeble attempts to protect music with digital rights management and copy-protected CD's. That is a last throw of the dice for an industry that is about to change forever.

Music artists make proportionalately more from tours than they do record sales (as the artist has more control over the tour - the label keeps most of the CD sales). I think the forthcoming U2 gig in twickenham will net them about 14Million alone!!
And upcoming bands get nothing off CD sales either as they get bound to contracts that takes money off them to pay for promotion of the record. Publishers are having a laugh out of it and the artists are getting a bum deal as it is.
Taking copyright from the equation will hurt the publishers much more than the artists (and they deserve it).

Originally posted by Killian
I think it should last forever. A high proportion of today's so-called artists only survive by 'borrowing' old material. Can you imagine what it would be like if copyright was to run out on everything.

Artitsts would be more free to borrow more old material and make more new works.
I'm not a bit fan of Norman Cook, but many love his work. Much of his output is never heard as he has been ubable to obtain clearance to use the work sampled in it. That is ridiculous to me..
If someone is taking an old piece of music and breathing new life into it for a new audience then that should be encouraged.

Originally posted by kilauea
I wouldn't expect you to support it Joe, especially in your situation. But you are still assuming that there is no other way to make a living off IP other than through copyright (i.e. offical endorsments, public appearances etc).



Actually, I can probably make more money as things stand from consultancy and contracting than from publishing and writing, and I've been in the 'making money from IP' business for about 20 years - most of my working life.

Shareware, Open Source, Copyleft, Creative Commons - I'm not really bothered about these things provided that the essential issue of copyright staying with teh author and the author being in a position to Yea or Nay what is dne with his or her work stays in place.

How can an up and coming novellist make appearance money?
How does a technical author justify being asked to turn on the City Christmas Lights?
What sort of 'endorsement' will a poet be able to make?

The world changes - of course it does - and yes, you're right, publishers will get hit more than artists. However....

In the brave new world of no copyright, who will pay for the production of the goods to distribute, or for the marketing, etc.?

We're not all U2 or JK Rowling - but one things that will almost certainly happen is that the only people who will be able to prosper and get their creative output distributed widely and well known are people who've already got big pockets.

Joe

Wasn't this a thread about music copyright at some point?
; )

The idea that up and coming musicians won't be able to distribute their work is absurd. You posted that comment on the Internet. Its a place where "nobody's" can distribute their work and if its good enough make a name for themselves.
What it actualy does is level the playing field a bit for less well known artists, not make it harder.

Ethically I just don't believe its right that if someone spends 5 minutes writing a song (it does happen) they should be paid for it for the rest of their lives (possibly without ever performing it live). How can that be justified?

Originally posted by kilauea
I'm not a bit fan of Norman Cook, but many love his work. Much of his output is never heard as he has been ubable to obtain clearance to use the work sampled in it. That is ridiculous to me..

How is this ridiculous??

If he goes ahead and uses other artists' material that he's not received clearance for, then that's simple theft. If he wants more of his output to be heard, then perhaps he shouldn't rely so much on being able to sample other people.

I've always found the idea of sampling to be rather strange. It seems to me like saying it's ok for a writer to copy out chunks of, say, JK Rowling's work, change a few words here and there, re-arrange it a bit maybe, and then claim it as their own, as it's been "freshened up" or whatever.

Perhaps you remember Norman Cook's (aka Beats International) effort from the early 90s "Dub be Good to me"? Strangely (or outrageously, depending on your view) similar to the Clash's "Guns of Brixton"? I believe "Dub be Good to me" was then claimed to be a Tribute to the Clash, and I think royalties were paid to Paul Simonon.

I know if I'd written songs, I'd feel very personal about them, and would be furious if someone else wanted to mess about with them!

StarSparkle

Originally posted by kilauea
Wasn't this a thread about music copyright at some point?
; )

The idea that up and coming musicians won't be able to distribute their work is absurd. You posted that comment on the Internet. Its a place where "nobody's" can distribute their work and if its good enough make a name for themselves.
What it actualy does is level the playing field a bit for less well known artists, not make it harder.

Ethically I just don't believe its right that if someone spends 5 minutes writing a song (it does happen) they should be paid for it for the rest of their lives (possibly without ever performing it live). How can that be justified?

Quite right - apologies for wandering off topic!

It's not the 5 minutes that's spent writing the song - it's the years of experience or the 'creative spark' that allows it to be done that's being rewarded. In a world where land can be owned by teh same family for hundreds of years by accident of birth, I'd say that being able to earn money from your creativity is quite acceptable.

"Nobody's" can market and distribute their works across the Net but actually reaching a market, getting radio play, getting those personal appearances lined up - they're not necessarily made easier bnecause you're theoretically making your stuff available to millions of Net users.

Those users have to find your stuff, be willing or able to pay and be on the end of a Net connection that supports downloading - not everyone is on broadband yet!

Getting back to the personal appearances, endorsements, etc. - the questions still remain about how much income is realistically available for the vast majority of artistes from such sources.

I'm sorry, but looking at it with my writer's head on, or my publisher's head, or my software developer head, or my film making head - I'm still not convinced about doing away with copyright willy-nilly. I may choose to let my stuff out in non-conventional forms of copyright, but I'd still want to feel that it's protected to somedegree.

Joe