In a message dated 6/26/2010 2:33:07 AM Pacific Daylight Time, wiki-list@phizz.demon.co.uk writes:
When service providers are lobbying to promote copyleft they are doing so in order muddy the copyright waters. The amount of copyleft material in the music world is, with the exception of promotional material, almost zero. When service providers start promoting free licenses to legislators they are doing so in order to undermine copyright within the online world. >>
{fact} When I go to YouTube, the number of videos which are some bad amateur singer trying to sing some good song far outweigh the number of original videos of that song/group. The amount of free content in music, in general is rapidly approaching or perhaps past par with all professional music ever created to this day.
It's the proliferation of the ability for any person in the world to make a spontaneous video that has now completely swamped all previous video content.
When people start rapibly screaming that free licenses are just trying to promote stealing, they just aren't getting it. The *point* of free licensing is to promote sharing, which is mostly personal content, regardless of what some music lobbying group is trying to make-up. Video sex chat rooms create more video every single day, than RCA ever created in a week. And that's going to accelerate. Same thing with music, same thing with text. The amount of free is many times the amount of unfree.
WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 6/26/2010 2:33:07 AM Pacific Daylight Time, wiki-list@phizz.demon.co.uk writes:
When service providers are lobbying to promote copyleft they are doing so in order muddy the copyright waters. The amount of copyleft material in the music world is, with the exception of promotional material, almost zero. When service providers start promoting free licenses to legislators they are doing so in order to undermine copyright within the online world. >>
{fact} When I go to YouTube, the number of videos which are some bad amateur singer trying to sing some good song far outweigh the number of original videos of that song/group. The amount of free content in music, in general is rapidly approaching or perhaps past par with all professional music ever created to this day.
Its not the 100s of bad renditions that are attracting the views and it isn't the bad renditions that people are visiting the site to listen too. Pay the ones that created the viewable ones or those that you can listen too.
Complaining about someone sitting in their bedroom badly strumming or singing a song is where copyright enforcement goes too far.
It's the proliferation of the ability for any person in the world to make a spontaneous video that has now completely swamped all previous video content.
At best they put a slideshow of photos from flickr with a song from their favourite pop artist. Normally they have a photo of the album cover or publicity shot of the artist which shows for the duration of the song.
When people start rapibly screaming that free licenses are just trying to promote stealing, they just aren't getting it. The *point* of free licensing is to promote sharing, which is mostly personal content, regardless of what some music lobbying group is trying to make-up.
It isn't the free that is getting the views. There may be a huge amount of free material on youtube but its the 1% that happens to be under copyright that is getting the views and drawing the advertising revenue.
On 26 June 2010 11:53, wiki-list@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote:
The point of my post was, of course, that ASCAP are attempting to apply pressure to Congress to outlaw the licence most Wikimedia content is released under (by its creators).
They want to stop the actual creators of content from releasing it under copyleft licences.
I would hope you'd have something to say about that issue.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
On 26 June 2010 11:53, wiki-list@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote:
The point of my post was, of course, that ASCAP are attempting to apply pressure to Congress to outlaw the licence most Wikimedia content is released under (by its creators).
I don't suspect that is correct for one moment, and there is nothing to suggest such FUD in their letter. They are talking about THEIR copyright and that "these groups simply do not want to pay for the use of *our* music". The music that is predominately listened to on the internet is not CC licensed you'll be hard pressed to find any CC licensed music that is in the top 40 of any chart or of any of the most popular downloads on a pirate site either. CC licensed music is not what is drawing eyeballs to youtube, and its not the background music that starts playing when you visit a MySpace page.
Undoubtedly one can find plenty of startup groups distributing their music under a CC license and best of luck to them. But the majority of the music you hear isn't under a CC license, do CC licenses have any thing other than zero effect on the music market place? I suspect not.
What CC licenses do in the music industry is give an excuse to justify downloading music from P2P networks. I recall Charles Nesson making just such a claim no more that a month a go "Penalizing innocent infringers for downloading music blights creators of music who want to freely distribute their music."
http://copyrightsandcampaigns.blogspot.com/2010/05/peer-to-peer-defendant-se...
I doubt the local basement startup band actually needs to distribute 5MB songs over a p2p network. That the bandwidth used would hardly trouble their hosting site.
Its such nonsense by Nesson and others at PK and the EFF that ASCAP want to counter.
On 26 June 2010 17:33, wiki-list@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote:
I don't suspect that is correct for one moment, and there is nothing to suggest such FUD in their letter. They are talking about THEIR copyright and that "these groups simply do not want to pay for the use of *our* music".
No, what ASCAP means by that is that they want to get a fee when people distribute CC-licensed music too.
You're bending over backwards to miss the point here.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
On 26 June 2010 17:33, wiki-list@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote:
I don't suspect that is correct for one moment, and there is nothing to suggest such FUD in their letter. They are talking about THEIR copyright and that "these groups simply do not want to pay for the use of *our* music".
No, what ASCAP means by that is that they want to get a fee when people distribute CC-licensed music too.
Do ASAC also expect to get a fee when music by people represented by BMI or SESAC gets distributed? I think not. So why would you assume that they expect a fee when any music is distributed by an artist that isn't signed up to them?
You're bending over backwards to miss the point here.
I think you are letting your prejudices show.
On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 12:57 PM, wiki-list@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
No, what ASCAP means by that is that they want to get a fee when people distribute CC-licensed music too.
Do ASAC also expect to get a fee when music by people represented by BMI or SESAC gets distributed? I think not. So why would you assume that they expect a fee when any music is distributed by an artist that isn't signed up to them?
If that artist is a "bad amateur singer trying to sing some good song" which is licensed by them, they're supposed to get a fee, aren't they?
On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 4:30 PM, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 12:57 PM, wiki-list@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
No, what ASCAP means by that is that they want to get a fee when people distribute CC-licensed music too.
Do ASAC also expect to get a fee when music by people represented by BMI or SESAC gets distributed? I think not. So why would you assume that they expect a fee when any music is distributed by an artist that isn't signed up to them?
If that artist is a "bad amateur singer trying to sing some good song" which is licensed by them, they're supposed to get a fee, aren't they?
Hmm, looking around, it seems that would be someone else (most commonly Harry Fox Agency, http://www.harryfox.com/public/MechanicalLicenseslic.jsp).
On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 12:33 PM, wiki-list@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote:
I doubt the local basement startup band actually needs to distribute 5MB songs over a p2p network. That the bandwidth used would hardly trouble their hosting site.
Its such nonsense by Nesson and others at PK and the EFF that ASCAP want to counter.
Nesson is a borderline drug-induced lunatic. He is also not affiliated with any of the organizations named in the ASCAP letter, as far as I know.
Though the comment that you quoted isn't that outrageous. "Penalizing ___innocent infringers___ for downloading music blights creators of music who want to freely distribute their music." (em mine). The concern isn't limited to P2P, it is also the risk of stigmatizing things which are available at no cost.
It's a pretty real risk— outside of the world of zero marginal cost informational goods "free" is strong a sign of a hidden catch, so people tend to have the wrong intuitions. I've made a decent amount of money selling people my photographic and software works under licensing _more_ restrictive than the licenses they were already publicly available under simply because some manager was equating free with dangerous and paid with safe.
This is a pretty uncontroversial argument. Slamming someone with a million dollar lawsuit for downloading something which they honestly and reasonably believed to be free would absolutely blight those who are willingly distributing their works at no cost. Now— the question of any of the actual existence of lawsuits against innocent infringers, is another matter entirely!
But having to demonstrate that the infringement was something a reasonable person ought to have known about before prevailing these bits of million dollar litigation would probably not unduly burden artists enforcing their copyright. ... or at least thats a discussion worth having and isn't something which should be perceived as automatically dangerous to people who depend on strong copyright for their livelihood.
On LWN I commented with a bit of criticism towards CC, PK, and the EFF because I don't think they've done enough to distance themselves from copyright abolitionist and crazy people like Nesson [http://lwn.net/Articles/393798/]. But it's a big step to go from saying that they could do more to distinguish their positions to saying that they are actually advocating these things. I don't think you can cite much in the way of evidence to support that position.
On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 12:57 PM, wiki-list@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote:
No, what ASCAP means by that is that they want to get a fee when people distribute CC-licensed music too.
Do ASAC also expect to get a fee when music by people represented by BMI or SESAC gets distributed? I think not. So why would you assume that they expect a fee when any music is distributed by an artist that isn't signed up to them?
[snip]
Yes. That isn't their official position, but their folks in the field take a position very much like that. "You can't prove that you won't eventually play something by one of our artists, even by accident, so you _must_ pay up".
I could bore you with my personal story of ASCAP extortion making my life unfun, but there are plenty of similar stories on the internet: http://blindman.15.forumer.com/a/ascap-closing-down-live-music-venues_post35...
On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 12:17 PM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
When I go to YouTube, the number of videos which are some bad amateur singer trying to sing some good song far outweigh the number of original videos of that song/group. The amount of free content in music, in general is rapidly approaching or perhaps past par with all professional music ever created to this day.
A video of an amateur singer trying to sing a song is also a copyright violation - they are publishing the song, and do not own the copyright on either text or melody. They probably won't be prosecuted over it, but legally they are violating copyright.
Copyright laws were mostly created in a time when situations were different. There used to be a group of content creators, and a general public. Copyright was mostly a right from one content creator to another - you should not publish the book, song, whatever that I own the copyright on. The public at large did not have the means to publish, so copyright laws might as well not apply to them. What they could do was so inconsequential (write over a chapter of a book, sing a song in presence of their coworkers) that nobody minded exceptions being made for them.
In the last few decades this changed. Automatic copying became cheaper and simpler with photocopiers, tape recorders, video recorders becoming mass products. Still, their impact was relatively minor. Although copyright industry saw these things as very problematic, they were mostly used to make single or few copies. Few people would make hundreds of copies of a single work to send them out. Fewer still did so for money. Many more people had the ability to become content publishers, but most of them did not use it.
Then came the internet, enabling every single one of us to make our work available on an unprecedented scale. And with that the borderline between public and content publishers really came down. And with that, copyright became applied to situations totally different from the ones for which it was created. It used to be clear that if you put a poem in a book that sold in the shops, part of the proceedings should go to the poet. It used to be clear that nobody had anything to do with it if you put that same poem in your diary. But now, people are making their diaries (blogs) available for everyone, without getting any kind of compensation for the effort. Large amounts of non-professional, non-commercial publishing to potentially huge audiences is a situation that copyright laws did not foresee. Unfortunately, instead of realizing that the effect of copyright laws, intended to protect the rights of one commercial publisher against another are draconian when applied to such a different situation, where the average citizen is the one being affected, the main reaction seems to be to make the laws even stricter.
Andre Engels wrote:
On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 12:17 PM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
When I go to YouTube, the number of videos which are some bad amateur singer trying to sing some good song far outweigh the number of original videos of that song/group. The amount of free content in music, in general is rapidly approaching or perhaps past par with all professional music ever created to this day.
A video of an amateur singer trying to sing a song is also a copyright violation - they are publishing the song, and do not own the copyright on either text or melody. They probably won't be prosecuted over it, but legally they are violating copyright.
It *is* a violation, and that is a part of the problem. The bloody awful YouTube singer does, however, receive performance copyrights for what he does. Copyright by default means that anything, however bad or trivial, has copyrights; this includes the weekly flyer from your local supermarket. For all of the faults of US copyright law there was much positive to be said about the former registration and renewal system.
Copyright laws were mostly created in a time when situations were different. There used to be a group of content creators, and a general public. Copyright was mostly a right from one content creator to another - you should not publish the book, song, whatever that I own the copyright on. The public at large did not have the means to publish, so copyright laws might as well not apply to them. What they could do was so inconsequential (write over a chapter of a book, sing a song in presence of their coworkers) that nobody minded exceptions being made for them.
I see it as more between content father creators and filial publishers than between content creators alone. Since the general public's holy ghost had no dog in the fight it had no part in the eventual agreements. Copyright was a social contract between creators and publishers, and that still underlies its philosophy in common law countries. Leave it to the French to fuck up the balance by associating it with the rights of man and moral rights!
Now the public does have an interest in the fight, but mostly without any interest in making money out of it. That calls for a review of what copyright is all about from the ground up. That's a far more substantial discussion than the enforcement discussions that the publishers would prefer. It's the publishers, not the creators, that stand to lose the most; they have every reason to see the holy ghost kicked out of the trinity.
In the last few decades this changed. Automatic copying became cheaper and simpler with photocopiers, tape recorders, video recorders becoming mass products. Still, their impact was relatively minor. Although copyright industry saw these things as very problematic, they were mostly used to make single or few copies. Few people would make hundreds of copies of a single work to send them out. Fewer still did so for money. Many more people had the ability to become content publishers, but most of them did not use it.
Then came the internet, enabling every single one of us to make our work available on an unprecedented scale. And with that the borderline between public and content publishers really came down. And with that, copyright became applied to situations totally different from the ones for which it was created. It used to be clear that if you put a poem in a book that sold in the shops, part of the proceedings should go to the poet. It used to be clear that nobody had anything to do with it if you put that same poem in your diary. But now, people are making their diaries (blogs) available for everyone, without getting any kind of compensation for the effort. Large amounts of non-professional, non-commercial publishing to potentially huge audiences is a situation that copyright laws did not foresee. Unfortunately, instead of realizing that the effect of copyright laws, intended to protect the rights of one commercial publisher against another are draconian when applied to such a different situation, where the average citizen is the one being affected, the main reaction seems to be to make the laws even stricter.
In theory at least, the laws were there primarily to protect the creators, not the publishers. Enforcement of copyright law should primarily be the responsibility of the owner of the right, not of the state except in the case of egregious and wilful violation where a higher burden of proof would also prevail. The other point is that damages should need to be proven with evidence, and should in no way depend on speculative analysis about what the public might want to see or hear. It serves no-one (except lawyers) when the costs of legal actions far exceed actual damages.
Ray
On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 1:45 AM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Andre Engels wrote:
On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 12:17 PM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
A video of an amateur singer trying to sing a song is also a copyright violation - they are publishing the song, and do not own the copyright on either text or melody.
It *is* a violation, and that is a part of the problem. The bloody awful YouTube singer does, however, receive performance copyrights for what he does. Copyright by default means that anything, however bad or trivial, has copyrights; this includes the weekly flyer from your local supermarket. For all of the faults of US copyright law there was much positive to be said about the former registration and renewal system.
see this article on the work someone did to license some songs for a cover cd : http://www.cleverjoe.com/articles/music_copyright_law.html
For public performance of a song on youtube , it would fall under copyright: http://www.ascap.com/licensing/licensingfaq.html
hope that helps :
James Michael DuPont
On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 2:34 AM, jamesmikedupont@googlemail.com < jamesmikedupont@googlemail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 1:45 AM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Andre Engels wrote:
On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 12:17 PM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
A video of an amateur singer trying to sing a song is also a copyright violation - they are publishing the song, and do not own the copyright on either text or melody.
It *is* a violation, and that is a part of the problem. The bloody awful YouTube singer does, however, receive performance copyrights for what he does. Copyright by default means that anything, however bad or trivial, has copyrights; this includes the weekly flyer from your local supermarket. For all of the faults of US copyright law there was much positive to be said about the former registration and renewal system.
see this article on the work someone did to license some songs for a cover cd : http://www.cleverjoe.com/articles/music_copyright_law.html
Mechanical licenses don't cover video sync. Maybe if the video is really just someone singing, no choreography or anything, you could argue that point - I don't know.
For public performance of a song on youtube , it would fall under copyright: http://www.ascap.com/licensing/licensingfaq.html
Does distribution via YouTube qualify as a public performance, or is it copying/distribution? I assume the copyright holder would argue the latter.
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Copyright by default means that anything, however bad or trivial, has copyrights; this includes the weekly flyer from your local supermarket.
All of those are designed there is some creative input that goes into them. In some cases, given time, they have a decorative and nostalgic quality they makes them economically valuable. I don't see why someone should commercially exploit those fliers in some 20 years time.
For all of the faults of US copyright law there was much positive to be said about the former registration and renewal system.
In the past the corporations, those that owned the copyrights on the economically important works, registered and renewed the copyrights. What didn't get renewed or registered was the works of the those that weren't up with the legal system. Those works got expropriated, just ask the old blues guys who spent years trying to get what they were owed, and many of them never saw a penny.
In theory at least, the laws were there primarily to protect the creators, not the publishers. Enforcement of copyright law should primarily be the responsibility of the owner of the right, not of the state except in the case of egregious and wilful violation where a higher burden of proof would also prevail. The other point is that damages should need to be proven with evidence, and should in no way depend on speculative analysis about what the public might want to see or hear. It serves no-one (except lawyers) when the costs of legal actions far exceed actual damages.
There needs to be a deterrent to infringement. If all that happens if you get caught riding the bus without paying fare, is that you have to pay the fare, who would pay the fare upfront?
wiki-list@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Copyright by default means that anything, however bad or trivial, has copyrights; this includes the weekly flyer from your local supermarket.
All of those are designed there is some creative input that goes into them. In some cases, given time, they have a decorative and nostalgic quality they makes them economically valuable. I don't see why someone should commercially exploit those fliers in some 20 years time.
What is your yardstick for determining what one of these will be worth in 20 years? Some old Ivory Soap ads are gems to read a century later, and some small obscure companies did produce some very clever ads. For many others, particularly ones targeting a local market, copyright and long lasting impact were the furthest thing from the minds of the creators; they were just looking to appeal to next week's grocery shoppers. While an easy argument can be made that the unsigned art was a work for hire, it doesn't help when the company was taken over by a big chain 10 years later, and the chain itself went bankrupt after another 5 years.
For all of the faults of US copyright law there was much positive to be said about the former registration and renewal system.
In the past the corporations, those that owned the copyrights on the economically important works, registered and renewed the copyrights. What didn't get renewed or registered was the works of the those that weren't up with the legal system. Those works got expropriated, just ask the old blues guys who spent years trying to get what they were owed, and many of them never saw a penny.
That's not accurate. The concept behind renewals was that a creator who had received a raw deal when his work was first published could have a second chance. As a rule the publisher did not have the right to renew, and renewals by the publisher without a current authorization from the copyright owner are invalid. The creator could not give up his rights of renewal through the initial publishing contract.
It would take a tremendous amount of work challenge a publisher's claim to a work, and deep pockets would have more to do with the outcome than any legal right. Deep pockets can leave an opponent broke long before the real issues go to a judge. A couple years ago there was a discussion about the famous 1950s picture of Einstein with his tongue sticking out. It's now owned by one of the big image merchants, who had in turn bought out another, who had in turn acquired it when Associated Press was defunct. My inclination would be to ask if the photographer was a freelancer, and, if so, did he renew his copyright? Does a copy of his contractual agreement with AP still exist? Is there a proper chain of ownership to the present day? These are extremely difficult questions to investigate, especially for someone whose motives are other than pecuniary.
Much of the exploitation was done by those who now find their rights to the plunder challenged, not by individuals who chose to cover the blues number in a bar act.
In theory at least, the laws were there primarily to protect the creators, not the publishers. Enforcement of copyright law should primarily be the responsibility of the owner of the right, not of the state except in the case of egregious and wilful violation where a higher burden of proof would also prevail. The other point is that damages should need to be proven with evidence, and should in no way depend on speculative analysis about what the public might want to see or hear. It serves no-one (except lawyers) when the costs of legal actions far exceed actual damages.
There needs to be a deterrent to infringement. If all that happens if you get caught riding the bus without paying fare, is that you have to pay the fare, who would pay the fare upfront?
Deterrent works no better here than capital punishment as a deterrent to murder. Yes, there are bus-fare cheaters, but most people are happy to comply with an honour system. The bus companies provide a fare box where you can insert your fare, and information about the amount of the fare is easily available. When it comes to paying royalties in amounts that may be roughly equivalent to the bus fare there is nothing clear about it at all.
When you approach copyright from an enforcement mindset instead of one based on fairness to creators you get different results. If a fine is levied for evading bus fares you know that the company providing the service is the one who benefits from the fine. When a recording companies demands and receives money for an alleged copyright violation how much of that is passed on to the artist?
Ray
Ray
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