[Foundation-l] [foundation-l] EU wants to increase musicians' and singers' copyright to 95 years

[Milos Rancic]

Hm. I don't think that it would become a huge problem for Wikimedia
projects (except, of course, for Wikisource and very partially for
Commons). Of course, this is the problem of all humans, and in this
way it is a matter of WMF and Wikimedian community.

Every copyright today which lasts more then 5 years makes a big
problem to spreading contemporary knowledge. So, 50 or 500 years is
the problem of the same level.

While I think that it is important to be a part of lobbying front
against increasing a number of copyright years, I think that it is
much more important to work on spreading copyleft ideas.

One of the most efficient methods is not to consume copyrighted
material if it is not necessary. And this is especially applicable for
arts: consuming copyrighted art means consuming copyright, too, as
well as it is not necessary to consume some particular art, while it
is often necessary to consume some particular knowledge.

On 2/14/08, Benjamin Smith <benji.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> This would indeed be a HUGE problem for Wikimedia projects. I don't know
>  where our EU commissioner took that strange idea from, but it is totally
>  nonsense. I don't think there would be many artists benefiting from this
>  ; but for us, this would really be bad news. Finding records whose
>  author has died at least 95 years ago is very, very difficult. But I
>  guess we're not the only ones who would face this problem : probably
>  other free culture projects, but also internet sites, etc. could help us
>  oppose this.
>
>  This seems to me to be part of a larger problem. As with the US willing
>  to abolish rule of the shorter term, governments seem to be
>  strengthening their copyright rules, making projects such as Wikimedia's
>  face important problems. In a time when many people are uploading
>  illegally their music from the internet, this seems to me to be total
>  nonsense : it will become even more difficult to upload free music,
>  which means that people will illegally upload music, even more than now,
>  from artists who want to have their music protected. Instead of
>  uploading free PD early-20th-century music, people will be uploading
>  copyrighted music ; but if it's copyrighted, then why not take recent
>  music, 2008 music ? I don't think that's what EU wants, but that what
>  it's gonna get. So I don't see the point in this.
>
>  Yrs
>
>  fr:User:Benjism89
>
>
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