toomanyhelicopters wrote:how long should the term of copyright be? i'd go with 'eternity'. if you're entitled to rights based on what you've produced, why should those rights ever go away? once you die, they should be passed on through your family, subject to lame-ass inheritance taxes of course.
obviously, this is impossible in practice: who would you pay if you decide to copy a mozart song? also, it reveals a difficulty in calling IP 'property', in that it is assumed by those who buy into it that it should last forever. i don't think even the record companies have tried that one, though: they know that it is a government granted, fixed-term monopoly right.
should this be affected by who owns the copyright? good question. if a label owns the rights, there is no potential for inheritence tax, is there? so in that light, the person who owns rights is slightly getting shafted relative to the company who owns rights. i don't have much of a problem with that though, since having companies do reasonably well is crucial to the economic success of an industrialized nation, right? i guess if we wanted to be fair in this instance, we'd have to exempt copyrights from inheritance tax? golly, legal stuff is tricky!
nice logic! companies
are more important than people! i'm going to have to concede that one. especially since tax isn't important!
edit: funny that those in favour of copyright don't give a shit if the artist gets shafted, huh?
should artists have moral rights? whuh? what the hell is a moral right? and now you're getting into a massive can of worms, talking about "moral" issues which are wholly subjective. next you'll be asking if artists have a moral obligation to not write songs that suck, or to not write songs that encourage violence, or to not write songs that encourage discrimination based on race or gender or religion or sexual dildo etc etc. what are these "moral rights" that artists have in the EU and how do they work?
firstly, everything we've been talking about is pretty subjective, whether it be economics, property, rights, whatever. hence why we discuss it, rather than agreeing straight away! anyway, moral rights are how you stop pepsi using your song once you have sold the copyright. i.e. they are rights attaching to the author, which can't be sold ("inalienable"). basically, even if someone else owns the copyright, or the thing subject to copyright (eg. a painting) the artists still has a certain say over what happens to it. so, the record company can't licence your song for use in a pepsi ad, and you can't write over my painting in black felt tip.
'...must be some way in this day and age to allow an artist to make a living without making a bunch of middle men rich off his back"... isn't that fugazi? i'd say it is possible, just that it doesn't work for everybody because of things like:
some folks don't network well and need someone else to do it for them
some folks don't wanna deal with distribution
some folks don't have the music or message to attract an audience without established advertising
even the fact that not everybody is in the right place at the right time...
i have no desire to duplicate and distribute my music. i'd like to hook up with a label for that. i tend to think that's one thing they're really good for. if they make money, hell yeah, good show then. if they get my music out there to people who like it, that's what i'm most interested in. if i get a chance to tour as the opening band for some popular and established band that i like, i'm in pig heaven. i just want to get my music to the people who will like it. that's goal #1. fuck money. the only need i have for copyright is to ensure that pepsi doesn't use my song in their commercial. i don't want somebody else to profit off my music without my permission. as to whether or not i profit off my music or break even, i don't give two shits.
so, basically, copyright exists because artists are lazy and incompetent?
that's all fair enough, however i think here the point is this: if your only goal is to get your music to people who will like it, put it on the goddamn internet, and only enforce your copyright to stop people like pepsi.
you don't mind the label making money, fair enough, they're doing you a service. what if, though, they get paid a hell of a lot more than you, as is likely to be the case? i suppose you don't care about that either?
now most artists
do want money, and that's where the problem lies. its that which gets them into stupid contracts, which ironically screw them financially. believe it or not, artists are just as greedy as corporations are. why on earth should outkast make more money than a great scottish band that will never 'break' the 'market'? the only way to justify it, it would seem to me, is to revert to arguments supporting free market capitalism. is capitalism remotely desirable in the first place?
well i guess there's no arguing with americans about that one.
ps. 'stealing': downloading is only stealing if the government grants property rights in intangible things, in the same way that in the UK political protest against a dumb war in iraq is 'terrorism'. i'm neither a terrorist, or a thief, unless you believe the specious, highly emotive terms sold to you by the state, invented by the companies. this subject is about opinions. having yours backed up by law doesn't make it any more valid intrinsically.
pps. a minor point: the lightning-creating-glass thing. if the first person to make glass claimed it as his own invention, he'd fail (in terms of a patent application). it is a product of nature, and therefore not subject to IP as such.
