Had To Happen Sometime

[ejp626]

i hope you're not accusing me of being "holier than thou." i apologize if i came across that way. i'm just sharing my opinion and encouraging people to be honest with themselves about how they make their music-buying decisions.

Not you specifically, but these discussions almost always get into a deep rut. There is no question it is a catch-22 as far as whether US majors will continue to reissue music that can be legally "ripped off" overseas. However, I don't feel any major compunction against PD releases (particularly when I am overseas) for the reason that the ground rules at the time they were recorded was 50 year copyright (indeed it might only have been 35) and everyone made their recording decisions on the basis that they would have to recover costs within that window. As far as the artists, most of them aren't going to see money from reissues one way or the other because of the bad contracts they signed (although obviously Blue Note and Nessa are far better than most), so locking things up and never reissuing them seems abusive but in a different way from PD releases.

[Chalupa]

EU assembly backs 70-year copyright for musicians

By Huw Jones Thu Apr 23, 12:57 pm ET

STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) – The European Parliament voted on Thursday in favor of extending copyright on music recordings in the European Union to 70 years from 50 at present, diluting a draft law in a bid to reach a final deal.

The measure, if it becomes law, will ensure for example that recordings of the early Beatles hit "Love Me Do" do not become copyright-free from 2012.

EU Internal Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy had proposed prolonging performance copyright for singers and musicians to 95 years but many EU states, which have joint say with parliament, felt this was too long.

Parliament voted 377 in favor of 70 years, with 178 against and 37 abstentions.

Brian Crowley, the Irish lawmaker steering the measure through parliament, said earlier this week he was confident that a vote in favor of 70 years would win over enough EU states for final adoption.

Negotiations among EU governments begin straight away in an attempt to reach a final deal.

More here.....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090423/music_...usiccopyright_1

[Indestructible!]

EU assembly backs 70-year copyright for musicians

STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) – The European Parliament voted on Thursday in favor of extending copyright on music recordings in the European Union to 70 years from 50 at present, diluting a draft law in a bid to reach a final deal.

What a farce. Seriously. This decision is a complete joke.

Somewhere Walt Disney is laughing his ass off.

[king ubu]

Thanks for that long rant, Big Beat Steve - I quite agree again!

[Big Beat Steve]

As for those doings at the EU assembly ... really a farce indeed but not totally surprising. This has been in the pipeline for a while. Which is why I wrote to the effect of "as long as the 50-year cutoff date still is effective in Europe" earlier in this thread. Let's just see what becomes of it.

I dont expect ANY major reissue projects (of music predating the hard bop era) by the big companies to see the light of day then that would otherwise have been shelved because those oh so bad Public Domain labels are around. I'd rather expect this to become a case of even more items gathering dust and rotting in some dark basements (because - P.D. reissues or not - this IS going to remain a fringe market without huge profit potentials to the majors). But if this is what the advocates of the U.S. limits of 70 years advocate and if the musical tastes of those are narrow-minded enough to limit themselves to those "major" artists and "major" items then so be it ...

[Swinging Swede]

I wonder what will happen to those recordings whose copyright already has expired. Will they re-enter copyright, or will the 70 years only affect the recordings that so far haven't entered public domain yet?

If the former, legally released CDs like e.g. many from Hep will suddenly become illegal and have to be pulled from the market, which I don't think is fair.

[Fer Urbina]

Does the 50-year rule also cover cover art?

I think not (sorry I can't be more specific).

F

[Fer Urbina]

so when someone points out that "a law is a law," let's be honest with ourselves about what the law says, whether we agree with the law or not.

even if a music recording is not covered by copyright, why is it okay for european companies to steal the work of people who remixed, reedited, and/or remastered the original recordings? some of these outfits may invest in their own remasters, but what about the others? and for those who did their own remastering, did they use original sources, or did they begin with a previous remaster that was the result of the hard work of other engineers and producers?

Sure, a law is a law. And the copyright law has been consistently interpreted to only apply to recording date and not to remasterings.

True, although there is an exception. Avid (UK) do their reissues (with heavy-handed remastering IMHO) from the actual first issues, for instance, they did the Goodman 1938 Carnegie Hall from the 1950 LP (hence, no "extra" tracks), and they actually copyrighted their remastered version.

In any case, as expected, it's only when the issue gets to the big money in Europe that the politicians elected "by the people for the people" decide to bother about this.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

EU assembly backs 70-year copyright for musicians

STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) – The European Parliament voted on Thursday in favor of extending copyright on music recordings in the European Union to 70 years from 50 at present, diluting a draft law in a bid to reach a final deal.

What a farce. Seriously. This decision is a complete joke.

Somewhere Walt Disney is laughing his ass off.

In this case, it ain't Disney, it's The Beatles. Everyone knew this was coming when The Beatles approached public domain. Anyone who thought otherwise was kidding themselves. Their recordings generate millions of dollars. Millions of dollars get politicians attention.

[mikeweil]

... Again, not to do this to death, but Night Waves on BBC just had a piece on Handel and how he along with every other composer of his age would basically be liable for thousands of pounds of damages if today's intellectual property rights regime was in place in his era; the point was that Western civilization would be so much poorer for it.

Handel faced his probolems with bootlegs - he didn't want to publish his music but some London publisher named Walsh did and offerered him a share - he agreed. Otherwise he wouldn't have received any money out of it or would have to sue him.

Not quite the same subject, but still: http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=52233

[ejp626]

EU assembly backs 70-year copyright for musicians

STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) – The European Parliament voted on Thursday in favor of extending copyright on music recordings in the European Union to 70 years from 50 at present, diluting a draft law in a bid to reach a final deal.

What a farce. Seriously. This decision is a complete joke.

Somewhere Walt Disney is laughing his ass off.

In this case, it ain't Disney, it's The Beatles. Everyone knew this was coming when The Beatles approached public domain. Anyone who thought otherwise was kidding themselves. Their recordings generate millions of dollars. Millions of dollars get politicians attention.

Right, so copyright gets extended again -- almost completely because of Disney and the Beatles. The public would be so much better off if they just went ahead and put an infinite extension on those two monoliths (who do keep their works in print it must be said) so that the 95% or so of the uneconomical and ignored could go into PD as originally intended.