Michael Hiltzik, The Los Angeles Times; ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ (1924) just reached the public domain, showing the insanity of U.S. copyright law
"The liberation of all these creations, however, should also be an
occasion for mourning. They would have been released to the public
domain in the early 1960s, if not for an aggressive campaign staged in
Washington by big media companies, especially Walt Disney Co., desperate to keep lucrative control of their copyrighted works for as long as possible.
Copyrights prevent consumers or creators from accessing, building on, or
even repurposing artistic works without the permission of the copyright
holders or the payment of a fee that can be steep. That’s arguably an
obstacle to cultural development, and raises the question of why the
heirs should exercise so much power and collect such payouts so many
decades after the creators are gone."
No comments:
Post a Comment