Mike Masnick, Techdirt; How The Recording Industry Hid Its Latest Attempt To Expand Copyright (And Why You Should Call Your Senator To Stop It)
"Larry Lessig has a piece over at Wired where he explains how this is really just the latest attempt at copyright extension. Earlier this year, we had noted (happily!) that it appeared that the usual crew of copyright maximalists had appeared to give in,
saying they had no intention to push for any sort of copyright term
extension this year, meaning that for the first time in decades in the
US, some works may actually enter the public domain on January 1st next
year. And while the CLASSICS Act isn't a straight-up copyright term
extension, it is a form of copyright expansion on old works,
done for no other purpose than to give the copyright holders more ways
to extract money, without any corresponding public benefit. As Lessig
notes, this is explicitly a welfare system for musicians...
Now, I should note that I've seen some recording industry lobbyists
mocking Lessig's piece, claiming that how could he be against supporting
musicians. This, of course, is the whole setup of this bill. It's
designed -- like so many copyright expansions in the past -- to make it
hard for people to question, because, really, who doesn't want to
support the content creators we like? But that ignores the other side of
this equation. Copyright is designed to benefit the public. The whole setup is to give an exclusivity to content creators for a limited time in order to give them the incentive to create.
For EVERY SINGLE WORK that would be impacted by this bill, that incentive worked. It worked decades and decades ago. Those recordings were all created prior to 1972. So why do they now need more incentive
for the works that were already created? And why, if we're giving them
more incentive, does the public not get anything back in return? That's
the hidden part that the lobbyists and think tank shills for the
recording industry are hoping you'll ignore. The "expansion" here is at
the expense of the public. And it's a big expense. For no benefit at
all. The copyright system was an incentive system for creation, in the
recognition that it would then help the public get access to content.
But the CLASSICS Act flips that over. It takes away from the public and
provides no new incentives to anyone."
No comments:
Post a Comment