Warning! serious post ahead, if you're here for pictures of puppies or stupid stories then stop back tomorrow, when normal service will be resumed
I was reading a couple of opinion pieces today in The Guardian on the subject of copyright. The music industry in the UK is pushing for the extension of the copyright term in sound recordings to be increased from 50 to 95 (or more) years. This is as astoundingly bad idea.
Copyright as a concept has its roots in Britain. With the advent of movable type press machines it became possible for authors to earn money from selling copies of their works. Very quickly, however, other publishers would re-typeset the book and flood the market with their own editions making it almost impossible for authors to make any money. In response to this the government passed the Statute of Anne (1710), a law ensuring that authors have the exclusive right to publish their book for 14 years from first publication. This protected authors by allowing them to make money from their work for a fair length of time, before it was passed into the public domain.
The copyright laws that hold today are, in their basic structure, similar to the Statute of Anne (as per usual wikipedia has a good discussion). In the case of music, the copyright term is 50 years; after which the works lapse into the public domain where they may be used by anybody. This means that much of the classic rock and roll from the 1950's is now coming into the public domain. Record companies wish to avoid this and are lobbying hard for an extension of the copyright term from 50 to 95 years.
Extending the copyright term in this way is a bad idea for two reasons. Firstly the copyright laws are designed so that the people who create great works of art are fairly compensated for them; a period of 95 years is utterly unnecessary for this purpose, the only people who stand to gain from this are the record labels, who get the exclusive rights to works long after the original artists (and probably anybody who remembers the music being made) are dead.
The second point is that most songs over 50 years in age have little to no commercial value, as demonstrated by this quote from one of the Guardian articles:
As the British Library reminds us (in a very even-handed review of the situation), a number of US-based studies show that less than 2% of works have any commercial value at all 55 to 75 years after they have been created
Increasing the copyright period to 95 years would leave us with masses and masses of songs that it just isn't economically feasable for the labels to reissue, but shut off from those who are enthusiastic about them by a law that exists only to keep more control with the record companies (as an aside I am somewhat reminded of the long tail: The observation that the popularity of objects is well described by a power law (very few popular objects, and very many less popular ones that nevertheless combined make up most of the total sales).
It is orders of magnitude more beneficial for our society to release these songs so that they may be archived and enjoyed by anybody that is interested. The extended copyright term does nothing but put more money and control in the hands of a few powerful record labels.
It is for these reasons that the article by Mick Hucknall on copyright law got me pretty riled up. Just read through it for yourself. The first five paragraphs say "copyright is a good thing, it allows artists to make money", which I agree with completely. It is important that creators have a mechanism by which they can be guaranteed to benefit from their own creations.
In a completely baffling logical jump it is then stated that "arguments against the extension of the copyright term in sound recordings from 50 to 95 years are retrogressive and misconceived" without ever giving a reason why we should increase the length of the copyright period! He states that extending copyright is about "nurturing the development of a truly revolutionary explosion in small-scale grassroots creative businesses" without ever explaining how an extension of copyright would achieve this, and also says:
Allowing valuable sound recordings to pass into the public domain does not create a public asset: it represents a massive destruction of UK wealth, and a significant loss to the UK taxpayer as exploitation moves offshore or into the grey market.
Completely neglecting the facts that materials in the public domain do create completely awesome public assets (here is another) and that the vast majority of our musical heritage is not considered profitable enough to bother record labels and so, if the copyright term is extended to 95 years these works will just be locked away by laws, where nobody can see them and they are helping nobody at all. Have you ever noticed how cheap it is to purchase copies of classical music and literary classics? This is because they are out of copyright, forcing companies to be competitive with their pricing (if you sell them at a high price, somebody else can just release a cheaper version). This opens up huge swathes of our cultural heritage to the people at large and is a far cry from the "grey market" that Hucknall warns us about. Indeed there is more incentive for an underground market to arise around copyrighted works (DVD copying in SE Asia, anyone?), as the monetary gains are much, much higher.
I am well aware that a business with a monopoly over something will resist change very strongly. In a world full of YouTubes, Google Videos, Myspaces, blogs, vlogs, social networking and Facebooks there comes a time when we have to realise that laws designed to protect against the first printing presses just aren't adequate to deal with today's world.
Rant over.
late edit: just looked at the comments below Hucknall's opinion piece, looks like the Guardian readers are also ripping him a new one. This is probably my favourite comment so far:
Rubbish, capitalist nonsense. Having said that, I wish the Valentine Brothers and Aretha Franklin had stepped in and asserted some protection over their songs before you butchered Money's Too Tight and Angel
I was reading a couple of opinion pieces today in The Guardian on the subject of copyright. The music industry in the UK is pushing for the extension of the copyright term in sound recordings to be increased from 50 to 95 (or more) years. This is as astoundingly bad idea.
Copyright as a concept has its roots in Britain. With the advent of movable type press machines it became possible for authors to earn money from selling copies of their works. Very quickly, however, other publishers would re-typeset the book and flood the market with their own editions making it almost impossible for authors to make any money. In response to this the government passed the Statute of Anne (1710), a law ensuring that authors have the exclusive right to publish their book for 14 years from first publication. This protected authors by allowing them to make money from their work for a fair length of time, before it was passed into the public domain.
The copyright laws that hold today are, in their basic structure, similar to the Statute of Anne (as per usual wikipedia has a good discussion). In the case of music, the copyright term is 50 years; after which the works lapse into the public domain where they may be used by anybody. This means that much of the classic rock and roll from the 1950's is now coming into the public domain. Record companies wish to avoid this and are lobbying hard for an extension of the copyright term from 50 to 95 years.
Extending the copyright term in this way is a bad idea for two reasons. Firstly the copyright laws are designed so that the people who create great works of art are fairly compensated for them; a period of 95 years is utterly unnecessary for this purpose, the only people who stand to gain from this are the record labels, who get the exclusive rights to works long after the original artists (and probably anybody who remembers the music being made) are dead.
The second point is that most songs over 50 years in age have little to no commercial value, as demonstrated by this quote from one of the Guardian articles:
As the British Library reminds us (in a very even-handed review of the situation), a number of US-based studies show that less than 2% of works have any commercial value at all 55 to 75 years after they have been created
Increasing the copyright period to 95 years would leave us with masses and masses of songs that it just isn't economically feasable for the labels to reissue, but shut off from those who are enthusiastic about them by a law that exists only to keep more control with the record companies (as an aside I am somewhat reminded of the long tail: The observation that the popularity of objects is well described by a power law (very few popular objects, and very many less popular ones that nevertheless combined make up most of the total sales).
It is orders of magnitude more beneficial for our society to release these songs so that they may be archived and enjoyed by anybody that is interested. The extended copyright term does nothing but put more money and control in the hands of a few powerful record labels.
It is for these reasons that the article by Mick Hucknall on copyright law got me pretty riled up. Just read through it for yourself. The first five paragraphs say "copyright is a good thing, it allows artists to make money", which I agree with completely. It is important that creators have a mechanism by which they can be guaranteed to benefit from their own creations.
In a completely baffling logical jump it is then stated that "arguments against the extension of the copyright term in sound recordings from 50 to 95 years are retrogressive and misconceived" without ever giving a reason why we should increase the length of the copyright period! He states that extending copyright is about "nurturing the development of a truly revolutionary explosion in small-scale grassroots creative businesses" without ever explaining how an extension of copyright would achieve this, and also says:
Allowing valuable sound recordings to pass into the public domain does not create a public asset: it represents a massive destruction of UK wealth, and a significant loss to the UK taxpayer as exploitation moves offshore or into the grey market.
Completely neglecting the facts that materials in the public domain do create completely awesome public assets (here is another) and that the vast majority of our musical heritage is not considered profitable enough to bother record labels and so, if the copyright term is extended to 95 years these works will just be locked away by laws, where nobody can see them and they are helping nobody at all. Have you ever noticed how cheap it is to purchase copies of classical music and literary classics? This is because they are out of copyright, forcing companies to be competitive with their pricing (if you sell them at a high price, somebody else can just release a cheaper version). This opens up huge swathes of our cultural heritage to the people at large and is a far cry from the "grey market" that Hucknall warns us about. Indeed there is more incentive for an underground market to arise around copyrighted works (DVD copying in SE Asia, anyone?), as the monetary gains are much, much higher.
I am well aware that a business with a monopoly over something will resist change very strongly. In a world full of YouTubes, Google Videos, Myspaces, blogs, vlogs, social networking and Facebooks there comes a time when we have to realise that laws designed to protect against the first printing presses just aren't adequate to deal with today's world.
Rant over.
late edit: just looked at the comments below Hucknall's opinion piece, looks like the Guardian readers are also ripping him a new one. This is probably my favourite comment so far:
Rubbish, capitalist nonsense. Having said that, I wish the Valentine Brothers and Aretha Franklin had stepped in and asserted some protection over their songs before you butchered Money's Too Tight and Angel
