Two- 1. The classic film Nosferatu wouldn't even exist today without bootleggers as it ran afoul of the copyright of the Stoker estate, and all copies of the film were ordered to be destroyed. 2. One of my favorite bands ended up bootlegging their own work as the record company who owned the rights went out of business and it was impossible for them to find out who actually owned the rights to purchase it back. Copyright law essential begs people to pirate.
We all stand on the shoulders of giants. It's the whole system that needs to be re-think not only the amount of years somebody can benefit from a work. Also CC is not really that similar to free software and GPL licensing (it's only similar in one of his forms). I really suggest this VERY interesting talk about copyright and his social consequences. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-eginMQBWII4.html (this link is about GPL licensing in general) www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html "every new invention is a synthesis, the resultant of innumerable inventions which have preceded it in the vast field of mechanics and industry. Science and industry, knowledge and application, discovery and practical realization leading to new discoveries, cunning of brain and of hand, toil of mind and muscle - all work together. Each discovery, each advance, each increase in the sum of human riches, owes its being to the physical and mental travail of the past and the present. By what right then can anyone whatever appropriate the least morsel of this immense whole and say - This is mine, not yours?”. Some bearded guy.....Nop, not that one :) Cheers!
Any software i make in my free time i always release open source under a permissive license. Even though it is all insignificant trash, there have always been people asking for the source and reusing it.
We all stand on the shoulders of giants. It's the whole system that needs to be re-think not only the amount of years somebody can benefit from a work. Also CC is not really that similar to free software and GPL licensing (it's only similar in one of his forms). I really suggest this VERY interesting talk about copyright and his social consequences. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-eginMQBWII4.html (this link is about GPL licensing in general) www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html "every new invention is a synthesis, the resultant of innumerable inventions which have preceded it in the vast field of mechanics and industry. Science and industry, knowledge and application, discovery and practical realization leading to new discoveries, cunning of brain and of hand, toil of mind and muscle - all work together. Each discovery, each advance, each increase in the sum of human riches, owes its being to the physical and mental travail of the past and the present. By what right then can anyone whatever appropriate the least morsel of this immense whole and say - This is mine, not yours?”. Some bearded guy.....Nop, not that one :) Cheers!
@Bilbo's Nuts it's so nice to see old artists that didn't release anything from the 70s, making a living out of their old hits. To think that at least 2 or 3 more generations of people who bring nothing to culture and art will thrive because some old song from the 70s is heartwarming. On the other hand, no more "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini" by Rachmaninoff, no more "Dies Irae" in "Symphonie fantastique" by Berlioz, "The Planets" by Holst, "Symphony No. 2" by Mahler...etc, but those are just generic rap pieces, who cares.
@Bilbo's Nuts If something lands in the public domain, it's not becoming property of the state, but the public domain. Hence we call it a work in the public domain. Also, the heirs already inherit what wealth the creator gained from his or her work. Those moochers should create something themselves to live on. Isn't the whole point of capitalism that it incentivizes people to create stuff? Or is capitalism just a money grubbing scheme?
Absolutely agree, Your arguments very well put. 30 year term is plenty. Copyright enabled money grabbing is also fuelling big problems for music teachers on youtube .
depends on categories. tech related should be 5 years max or even not copyrightable at all. Arts and musics 20-30 years. also for musics, it needs to be significantly simillar to be considered a copyright infringment. the whole system needs an overhaul.
100% agree with you on this. Copyright law is being driven by big money; corporations with financial power are influencing lawmakers in what are allegedly democracies and throwing money at court cases to set precedents. As always, follow the money.
Good stuff. One of the sneakiest tricks in this whole game was the bolting of the word “property” onto the word “intellectual”. From that, it’ was short step to calling people “pirates” and accusing them of “theft” (I know the “STEALS” in the title is ironic). As long as that fundamental difference is muddied between _actual_ property and things like music, software, art, etc - the difference being that with the former, if you make a chair and I take it then you no longer have it, whereas if you write a song and I sing it, your ability to still sing it is unaffected - this problem will remain serious. In fact, I reckon it will get worse. For example, 3D printing is going to grow in capability. You’ll no longer need to order many spare parts for broken things. Heck, I bet you here will come a time where you can print food! And then just watch intellectual “property” machinery like copyright expand in scope. Someone stumbles on the fact that if you take the pre-existing 3D printing “recipe” which produces a slice of “meat-configured protein” in between two slices of “bread-configured carbs” and modify it to add some “cheese-configured fat” to the top of the meat, you have a delicious new food combo, and within hours they get hit by desists and take-downs from the IP lawyers at MacDonalds, who by then, shortly after joining both the MPAA and RIAA, will no doubt have been acquired by Disney.
We already live in a space where scarcity is almost non existent. PC's are perfect copying machines. It's the digital version of printing food. I'll copy paste you a message that I wrote above. Cheers! We all stand on the shoulders of giants. It's the whole system that needs to be re-think not only the amount of years somebody can benefit from a work. Also CC is not really that similar to free software and GPL licensing (it's only similar in one of his forms). I really suggest this VERY interesting talk about copyright and his social consequences. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-eginMQBWII4.html (this link is about GPL licensing in general) www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html "every new invention is a synthesis, the resultant of innumerable inventions which have preceded it in the vast field of mechanics and industry. Science and industry, knowledge and application, discovery and practical realization leading to new discoveries, cunning of brain and of hand, toil of mind and muscle - all work together. Each discovery, each advance, each increase in the sum of human riches, owes its being to the physical and mental travail of the past and the present. By what right then can anyone whatever appropriate the least morsel of this immense whole and say - This is mine, not yours?”. Some bearded guy.....Nop, not that one :) Cheers!
Uhh? But I never said scarcity was almost non existent. I just said in the digital world scarcity is non existent considering PCs are remarkable copying machines. @@palmomki
That's the exact reason why food recipes cannot be copyrighted. The recipe is not the food itself, but a set of instructions to reproduce the original creation. By this definition, sheet music, 3-D printable designs, and theatrical scripts are also "recipes". Should these be subject to copyright too, or should they be exempt like food recipes? It's also worth noting that a recipe is not strictly needed to reproduce a creation. If you study a particular meal, play, or piece of music, you can write your own recipe/script (or in the case of music, transcribe sound into written score), and still be able to at least approximate the original. But your main point still stands: "intellectual property" is different from physical property because of its ease of reproducibility, and the fact that reproducing an intellectual creation does not actually steal it from the creator. For example, if I build an exact replica of your chair, I now have a chair that looks just like the one you designed and constructed. But I haven't taken *your* chair away, denied your right to sit on it, or challenged your ownership of it.
While they are indeed working on lab grown meat which they could put ownership laws on, they call people suggesting the attack on farm raised meat (massive sacrifice of cows far Gaia in environmental laws geared towards stopping global warming) conspiracy theorists. The theory is the elites are trying to stop farmers raising beef so they can force everybody to buy the genetically modified beef that never took off and was banned for sale in some European nations. Monsanto was trying to put copyright on plant seeds though already. They started with their own GMO seeds to grow with roundup, who's genes spread to neighboring farms who seed saved to plant the following years by bees visiting the crops. It was in fact Monsanto who tainted the other's farms seeds but they had the money so won court cases. Monsanto was bought out by Bayer because they were so in debt over round up killing people. Big companies are trying to buy rights to heritage seeds. There was such a scare that there are seed organizations which started up like the creative commons, their rule is you can never own rights to any new variety created with your breeding of them. For cultivars of plants, like roses or apples, I have no idea how long patents last, but that is more like the rights on a person as there will only ever be one of that DNA comprising that cultivar. People try to scare others off from growing things from seed still as many new plants are generated in huge labs but private home growers can still grow things. If you grow a Barrett pear from seed the offspring seedling should taste similar enough to the parents, many nursery companies sell such seedlings of plants in fact as the parents when it is not, but people who do not know, or people fighting to limit or sabotage resources of others will try to scare people away from taking the longer time growing things out by seed and try to force people to buy things from the larger companies selling them. They limit growth of new varieties by that, but they also create a monoculture with our food crops with limited genetic variability. The most grown banana cavendish ready to be wiped out by the first microbe coming along it is suspectable to. Most of all, plants deserve the right to have sex just like humans do. Cloning plants limits their potential. The only real ownership on human made food so far is name. Generic store brand versions of name brands sell by just not using their name. Fruit loops is fruitios and Oreos called chocolate sandwich. Recipes will slightly differ. It is the trying to own the plants which is far more dangerous and they are doing unsuccessfully for the most part now, and the genetically modified genes getting into our plants genetic code potentially even deadly to us or the plants ability to reproduce itself. We could only hope the edited gene sequences fell off and the food manipulators die off. The 21th century version of poisoning the well that they are doing to try to force people to buy their snake oil.
Just when technology makes it easiest to remix, the legal climate makes is the hardest to openly. I'm a big fan of open source. I use plenty of open source programmes, and participate in sharing of my work on various platforms.
The legal climate is a response to the technology, it's rich people successfully lobbying to limit the effects of the digital revolution (the ability to easily access, copy and distribute information of any kind) by legal means.
The 20-year rule is also enforced in the world of medical patents. The only difference there is that if you want to renew the patent you have to establish that you have made a medically significant alteration/enhancement to the pre-existing pharmaceutical. Otherwise the compound is free-for-all to create and market. This led to a watershed case in 2013 when Big Pharma company Novartis tried to renew their patent on a critical leukemia drug in India by superficially altering the compound. If passed, it would have jumped the price from 126 pounds to 1650 pounds per dose, and making generic competitor drugs subject to royalties. They got ultimately got rejected on the basis of a cynical attempt at "evergreening" a patent for profit at the expense of seriously ill people. While I recognize that the two cases aren't completely similar, I'm seeing a motive of profit maximization for the very few at the expense of the many (shared culture being claimed as private ownership)--only difference being that there's no regulation of patent renewal in this case. Completely crazy. Thank you for this video, Mr. Bruce!
I am so happy to hear that someone is discussing this important issue. This same is valid for scientific research as well and we should find ways to provide composers, scientist to benefit from their work without restricting the work from open release. Thanks for the information.
I agree wholeheartedly! The best musical developments in history have happened when composers stole freely from each other. [I am mostly thinking of the baroque period]
I am so happy to hear your concise explanation of our ridiculous copyright laws. I started complaining back in 1980 when the law was changed. It has become ever more onerous and complex and is obviously rent seeking on the part of huge production companies i.e. Disney. I support any effort to change them back to simpler and farer terms.
Thanks for articulating brilliantly what frustrates so many of us. The "I got mine" culture in the big business of copyright enforcement and gatekeeping is really holding us back. One might argue it's just another trait of "late stage capitalism" eh.
We all stand on the shoulders of giants. It's the whole system that needs to be re-think not only the amount of years somebody can benefit from a work. Also CC is not really that similar to free software and GPL licensing (it's only similar in one of his forms). I really suggest this VERY interesting talk about copyright and his social consequences. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-eginMQBWII4.html (this link is about GPL licensing in general) www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html "every new invention is a synthesis, the resultant of innumerable inventions which have preceded it in the vast field of mechanics and industry. Science and industry, knowledge and application, discovery and practical realization leading to new discoveries, cunning of brain and of hand, toil of mind and muscle - all work together. Each discovery, each advance, each increase in the sum of human riches, owes its being to the physical and mental travail of the past and the present. By what right then can anyone whatever appropriate the least morsel of this immense whole and say - This is mine, not yours?”. Some bearded guy.....Nop, not that one :) Cheers!
Late Stage Capitalism, yes. Just like late stage cancer. Its effects have metastasized throughout world economies not only in creative pursuits but also in broad economic and social forms of inequality and unfairness. Unregulated Capitalism values monopolistic profit seeking above all else, and has no built-in mechanism for valuing and balancing quality of life issues. Copyright law is supposed to create a semblance of that balance, but has become just another tool favoring corporate warehouses of "intellectual property" that value profit above all else. Just one more example of why REGULATIONS (copyright law is a type of "regulation" that has gotten out of control in favor of narrow corporate interests) are in fact good and necessary.
"Late stage capitalism" is nothing but capitalism at its best. There is no division between "Late State" and "Old state" if so, I'll love you to tell me when the division ocurred. It has always been an exploitative system, with power concentrated in the hands of few. I don't understand really your solution, more regulation to counter bad regulation? Is that it? If so, you need to ask yourself who are the ones making and applying the rules, because one thing is for sure. It's not us. Cheers. @@spongebrainsqueezepants7175
@@OjoRojo40 - You correctly point out the complications created by different interests. I don't know what you mean by "late state" and "old state" so I don't know what division you refer to. Capitalism is neither good nor bad by definition, but unregulated, it causes economic division and therefore, Unregulated Capitalism is BAD. Of course, who makes the regulations is a pertinent question. I don't want the foxes to be guarding the hen house either even though that often happens. I'm no fan of capitalism, but it's what we have to deal with right now. As a practical matter I believe regulation is the only way to muzzle the worst inclinations of capitalism, but many, usually those who have money, power, and greed they wish to protect, disagree with any form of regulations. And it seems to me, it is those monied interests, through centuries of judicial and legislative pressures (guided largely by those who have the money to litigate and legislate which usually does not include musicians/creators), who have shaped copyright law to their advantage. I'm not really suggesting that I have a "soution" per se. Just bloviating. What's your solution?
Vihart (RU-vidr) makes a similar case in her video "Twelve Tones." If you haven't seen it you should, and not solely because it addresses copyright. It's a brilliant video.
Definitely agree with you about the exorbitant duration of copyright and how the red tape of sample permissions stifles the industry as a whole (ran into this problem myself not long ago), but I could never get behind automatic public domain at an author's death. Many great artists have died young, and those continuing royalties are the livelihood of their family. A flat 50 years from publication sounds fair to me, even if it's split with a publisher.
Uff that 4:09 Xerath cameo, I HAD TO COMMENT because right about the time your video was uploaded yesterday, I was just showing that exact part of that exact lyric video to a musician friend of mine to show him a good example of using numbers as lyrics, synchronicity level 2053
@@alexshih3747 memes were never under Article 13, because they are mostly parody. The issue is with automated filtering - whether we can create an algorithm that can detect what is a parody and what isn't.
@@VikingVertigo And given that the algorithms frequently take down not only fair use content, but also stuff with no copyrighted material in them whatsoever, legal works or even someone's own works, I would say the answer is no.
That's the reason why we release all music as cc0. We realize that is not feasible for many artists, but from a point of artistry, it just doesn't make any sense to block someone from utilizing your work, if your goal is to help the art form to go forward.
That's great for you, I assume you're personally financially stable and able to fund your project through other means. I hope people remember that music also suffers when it's reduced to a hobby for those privileged enough to be able to afford it..
@@watsonunlimitedmusic We do everything ourselves, so there is not really much to finance. But I do agree that music should be subsidized in some way so people can live from it if they want to do it full time. After all creating and playing music is way less harmful than producing for the sake of producing, which is what our economy is about at the moment.
@@kravvall4869"music should be subsidized" --- Um... hell no! I pay enough in taxes and I have no interest in being forced to pay for the shit music that is produced today. If people voluntarily choose to pay for shit music with their own money, that is their choice. If you are unable to sell your music, then you need to find a marketable skill in some other area where you can make a living. We the taxpayers don't want to pay you for your hobby. Get rid of your sense of entitlement and learn how the world really works!
@@johnnastrom9400 I think the entertainment of the masses deserves at least a small portion of taxes. Nothing huge, maybe 1% extra tax, but it would likely help.
I especially hate this whole copyright issue in terms of film music: So many good works remain unperformed simply because the rights belong to nameless companies sitting in nowhere (And even if the original film studio is the rightful owner - you have no chance to get into contact with it. Because it's a big company which isn't interested in a little nobody who'd like to make music.). The sheet music never gets published and you are not allowed to write the music down yourself, even if you would be willing to pay the original composer after the Performance. (Please overlook my bad English - everytime I get angry I have difficulties expressing myself correctly.)
SineEyed 2020 Well, actually I did write some music already (if one would be interested one could find some examples uploaded on my channel) but I'm quite sure that I'm far better in playing the violin and arranging pre-existing music (if one would be interested one could NOT find some examples uploaded on my channel due to copyright issues) than in composing completely new one. Most of the time when I think I wrote a convincing little melody it doesn't take me long to find out that it already exists ...
@@Simon_A. I can understand your plight, believe me. Writing original music isn't an _easy_ thing to do. I know quite a few competent musicians who play well, but can't write something of their own to save their life. It's not something everybody has a knack for. And I don't think that being trained how to write music will necessarily ensure a person becoming someone who can write music that others enjoy. It helps, certainly, but I think someone either has the imagination for it, or they don't. If you're someone who does have a knack for it, cool! If you're not, oh well - that's most people in the world anyway. So it's no reflection on who you are as a person. No one should think less of you for not being able to write. However, if you're someone who is just really terrible at baking, and you can't even get pigs to eat your bread, so you resign yourself to pilfering the bakery down the street because you still love the taste of it even though you can't make it yourself... then yeah, at that point I'm going to make a moral judgement call and think a little bit less of you than I did before. I might suggest you talk to the baker - see if there's any work you could do to compensate for the bread you're eating. The honorable thing to do would be to at least _ask._ And look at it like this - if you show yourself to be honorable about it, and the baker lets you do some work around the bakery, you're in a prime position to finally learn how to make bread for yourself!
@Herman Martin you willingly went into a contract. If you don't agree with what happens under the terms of such contracts... don't sign them. If you find yourself doing things you believe to be unethical, yet you do them anyway to make a profit, then _you're_ just as much a bad guy as the corporate big wigs are..
@@rozzbourn timestamps indicate this thread as being nearly a year old. Add to that there being interactions here with more than just one individual and myself. This equates to me not knowing who "he" is or wtf situation you're talking about. So if you're hoping for any kind of meaningful response from me, I'll have to ask you to be a little more specific..
I definitely feel you with the frustration over the current state of copyright. It's pretty infuriating when even my own recordings of myself playing Beethoven and Chopin get automated copyright claims against them on RU-vid, claims by "one or more musical rights publishing societies" or some nonsense. I enjoyed the video, but I'm left feeling...hopeless. What do we _do_ about this situation? It seems like every time a series of videos like this one go around, it ends up going absolutely nowhere. How do you change the law when you're up against lobbying from the likes of Disney? It's just...depressing.
What do we do about this? Like many problems facing us in modern society, first we must greatly weaken (or better yet, utterly destroy) the power of the Capitalist class. If you insist on looking at problems with Liberal point of view, it will seem hopeless, because Liberalism (that is, Capitalism) is a total dead end; once a progressive force, in the days of kings and lords, now it has outlived its usefulness. Radically altering the way society functions so that it is properly accountable to all of its members, something that it fundamentally cannot be while the economy is still run by a tiny minority, is a necessary step before it can serve the needs of everyone in a truly fair and logical way.
I had a discussion with the publisher of one of my books where i mentioned that copyright should be limited to about 25 years or so very much in the that you are suggesting. The guy went absolutely ballistic...After that it seems to me the many of the people working seem entitled to profit fromother peoples creativity under the often false presumption that hey are acting in the creators interest
That was a great video, and articulated the issues so well. And it's no coincidence that the current situation happens to be so profitable for lawyers. Producing music (and other creative content) without violating copyright has become like navigating a minefield, and every time a mine goes off, it rains money for the legal profession.
The whole situation is perpetuated by lawyers, attorneys, solicitors --- by any name, a scourge --- who Will Never Allow the sorts of changes that would solve these problems.
I've been watching a lot of videos on this lately it seems... I'm a software developer of 7 years now, but whenever I see things like this I wonder if I shouldn't take a look at going back to law school for patent/trademark/copyright law. I honestly feel these things must be fixed. The Blurred Lines case is ample evidence, on it's own, that innovation is under attack. Part of me really wants to join the fight to stop this nonsense...
if a country functioned like a copyright haven as say switzerland with banks and money... that would be interesting to bypass US and Europe copyright law.
Brilliant video. As someone who often remixes music composed by others, I wish there was a better system in US copyright law to handle remixing works. Additionally, it can be SO HARD to find the proper metadata for some especially obscure pieces of music. It’s important that money goes to the right people, but if there’s no name metadata attached to a song, how do you know where it should go?
International copyright needs a full reform!! Time to revise and review like would be the case in any industry let alone innocent creative pursuits and learning. Ideally this would include a regulatory body that can act as a mediator. The problem is no one party is taking on the well informed responsibility to declare where the line is and whats is fair use. We have enough history to pull from and more than enough institutions, experts and lawyers qualified to co-ordinate a council in this interest. More and more online educational content is getting pulled down and blocked with any well earned revenue getting stolen by companies who only have a third party claim to mere seconds of one element of the entirety. Its insane. And whats more is that as more and more people continue to use streaming services for music, these third party leeches will only get more desperate. Copyright is killing creativity, and you have Disney to thank for a lot of it so please bear that in mind as it monopolizes the market and forces more and more people to cave in while sucking on its tit.
Problem is that the big players would only allow copyright reform if it made things even worse for everyone else than they are now. We live in an Plutocracy, be it in the States or the EU, and as such, those with the deepest pockets decides the rules.
We all stand on the shoulders of giants. It's the whole system that needs to be re-think not only the amount of years somebody can benefit from a work. Also CC is not really that similar to free software and GPL licensing (it's only similar in one of his forms). I really suggest this VERY interesting talk about copyright and his social consequences. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-eginMQBWII4.html (this link is about GPL licensing in general) www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html "every new invention is a synthesis, the resultant of innumerable inventions which have preceded it in the vast field of mechanics and industry. Science and industry, knowledge and application, discovery and practical realization leading to new discoveries, cunning of brain and of hand, toil of mind and muscle - all work together. Each discovery, each advance, each increase in the sum of human riches, owes its being to the physical and mental travail of the past and the present. By what right then can anyone whatever appropriate the least morsel of this immense whole and say - This is mine, not yours?”. Some bearded guy.....Nop, not that one :) Cheers!
Thank You for creating this "Collaborative," informative presentation. Most of the time a work is created, then it becomes old-hat and obsolete rather quickly.
Creative Commons is great until you find yourself getting hit with a claim, despite being 100% in compliance, on CC music. It's so amazing when it's being claimed by some company not even affiliated with the artist... Before I finally just gave up on youtube, I had a bunch of issues with this.
This is a great video, and I agree, copyright law is totally broken. It needs to be torn down completely and re-imagined from scratch. A few notes about copyright law in the US: • In 2019, the U.S. finally advanced forward one year from the long-standing pre-1923 date. Now public domain is anything published before 1924. From now until 2072, it will continue to advance on a yearly basis. • Why until 2072? Because in the US we actually have two concurrent systems. For anything published after 1977, we actually have the same model as Europe: life of the last surviving author + 70 years.
One of the best things I ever set for men's choir is an arrangement of Conversation With Death, which I first heard in the film "Songcatcher" and thought was public domain at the time. The estate of Lloyd Chandler secured the copyright in something like 2004 and I have been in touch with a musicologist who helped them do it (Carl Lindahl) but the administer (Garrett Chandler) has passed and Carl was not able to connect me to any surviving heir. The piece seems orphaned and I've been unable to publish my work, though I see other people do covers of the song all the time. One was fairly recently used on the TV show Super Natural.
Perhaps one way to reform copyright law would be to create a provision that a work enters the public domain upon a creator's death or that of his/her designated heir unless there is a legal document such as a will transferring ownership to someone else. This will allow orphaned works without clear ownership by a specific person or company to enter the public domain.
Also Sprach Zarathustra, from 123 years ago, finally enters the public domain in Europe at the end of this year, because Richard Strauss lived until 1949. Isn't that wild?
I quite agree with you, David! I have been inspired to write new arrangements of familiar songs for flute duet and keyboards (my current band). I guess I hadn't thought about copyright much because the arrangements haven't been played in public yet and are not likely to become commercial successes. There are so many local bands that play covers I guess I assumed that copyright didn't really apply here. But I have met it when I try to share my arrangements on MuseScore. I guess publishing, is what makes the difference. Anyone can sing or play a tune, but if you write it down or make money from it the copyright wolves will come sniffing.
The algorithms (RU-vid/Sound Cloud) that are sorting out copyright from culture should first exclude culture. If you have a pop song based on Bach, the Bach part can't be stolen from you....Just the transformative aspect can be stolen. Algorithms aren't worried about this because the entities behind the algorithms want the money first. Music needs to be given away to be heard. Producers and publishers have been in control of the legal changes for too long. I agree with so much that you're saying here. I think we should be able to find a way to better compensate composers for original compositions.
Great video. I feel like the comparison to patent laws is very relevant, and not one people bring up that often. The fact that intellectual property has a longer copyright than a patent is just ridiculous.
Intellectual property is abusive rent-seeking extremism. There is something drastically wrong with the constitution of any state that allows the state to have the power to repress people's fundamental liberties in this way. Also, it is not just the estates of the creators of the works that are the beneficiaries: the state benefits, too, as it taxes these estates. The state has a corrupt incentive to enable rent-seeking because it can extract part of the profits that rent-seeking generates, either through general taxation or, especially in older examples (look up the etymology of the word "ferry"), by charging license fees. Because rent-seeking usually needs some repression of people's liberty to be effective, it takes effect as a corrupt collusion between the state and arbitrary groups of private individuals. Thus, the state has a corrupt incentive to monetise as much of the economy as possible (as it takes a cut of all monetised transactions in the form of taxation), even when doing so is clearly contrary to the public interest. In many ways, the state is comparable to large online platforms such as Facebook or RU-vid.
Could it be that copyright law has gotten into the subconscious mind of (particularly) a pop songwriter, afraid of a suit, they produce 4 chord repetition with slightly altered pentatonic lines to soothe the masses and keep the lawyers at bay.
Excellent piece, sir. Copyright is a horrible idea. Bad for us as artists and bad for humanity. Some good reading on this- "Against Intellectual Property" by Stephen Kinsella, "Against Intellectual Monopoly" Michele Boldrin and David Levine.
I really like the idea of a standard 30 year copyright, then if the work is a substatial earner, the author of the work could apply for another 30 year copyright, with the option to withdraw the copyright at anytime. Then the copyright with automatically cancel after the second 30 years or death of the author, wichever comes first. The copyright issue frustrates me greatly as a big fan of Frank Zappas music, I am also writting an analytical dissertation of his works and it is really difficult to get hold of full orchestral scores.
I wouldn't mind 10 years after author's death if the rights were RETAINED by direct family members, but beyond that - as a composer myself - the current system is insane.
Zappa's case in particular has shown what a farce the IP system is: his son, Dweezil, has been touring with his father's bandmates and some of his own, playing originals and covers of his father's works. He's been forced to stop using his own father's name because he doesn't own the rights to it.
@@dcurry7287 Very strange. I too love Zappa. Was Dweezil an estranged son? Very odd he couldn't use his OWN father's name. I'd fight that s hit. Who's the f ucker who owns the rights to Zappa's namesake? I mean, that's f ucked up...
@@YumegakaMurakumo It's very fucked up and the info is only coming from either side, incredibly biased in favor of who's telling it of course. ""In 2002, Frank’s widow, Gail Zappa, founded the Zappa Family Trust, a holder for the title and copyright to Frank’s musical and artistic products, as well as his commercial image. As Rolling Stone reported in an extensive 2016 feature on the family rift, shortly before she died of lung cancer in 2015, Gail entrusted the Trust to her two youngest children, Ahmet and Diva, giving each of them a 30% stake while leaving Dweezil and Moon only 20% each.""
Yes from what very little I know concerning this subject David makes a lot of sense. Why would you not want your work openly available to the public after you have passed. Personally just knowing I had left something that people value would be a great buzz. .
The main beneficiaries of copyright law seem to be people who contribute anything, but take money for licensing the rights--middlemen and grandchildren, not the artists themselves. And yes, you could argue that those people paid to be able to do that. But in many cases they paid to be able to do that for 30 years or so, and then the government just gave them the right to do it for another 50. The other bad thing is that, for platforms like RU-vid which host content by millions of people, it's cheaper to just take the word of anyone who complains. So, in effect, you can often give yourself rights by claiming you have them.
I find this quite interesting. I havent looked into copyright much myself, so this was quite informative. I do find it unusual that we can 'own' something as ambiguous as soundwaves, experientially speaking... We dont experience the data on the hardrive, we do experience the sensation in the eardrum. Although i suppose the concept of ownership in and of itself is something strange and illusory. Perhaps a manifestation of the territorial mentality of us as animals.
There is one reason to extend copyright past death, allowing a creator with minor children who dies suddenly to still provide for his children. However, the longest that can justify is 18 years or so (age for a child to reach majority). I would accept a compromise that returned to a period of around 20 years with possibly one renewal and allowing that fixed period to constitute an inheritable asset, thus addressing the minor child problem while avoiding the continued copyright of something an artist created at 25 continuing for 70 years after their death at 73. Another option, which would give Disney et al what they want on key pieces, but even get them to allow them most items to enter the public domain is multiple renewals at increasing cost. Say the initial period is 20 years and the first renewal is 20 years for $1,000. Every additional renewal halves the time (rounding up to a full year) and doubles the cost. This would give us something like this: Total Length - Total Cost 20 years - free 40 years - $1,000 50 years - $3,000 55 years - $7,000 58 years - $15,000 60 years - $31,000 61 years - $63,000 You can, of course, increase the renewal multiple and they would need to be inflation indexed. Eventually, renewal will not provide sufficient revenue to make it worthwhile. For certain items, where control is more an image issue, the cost will increase rapidly. I would be surprised to see many pieces exceed 55 years, about the same as the old law with renewal.
One thing that could happen is that the copyright holders could be persuaded to create Creative Commons licences (even if for non-commercial use only) for those works which after say 20 or 30 years have elapsed are no longer making them any money, or at least, minimal amounts of money (with the creator's permission, assuming they are still alive). They could do this at very little cost to themselves - how many works have not made any money in the first twenty years after creation / publication, but have then gone on to make significant money for the copyright holder?
@@davidschreiter3513 Sure, but if the argument is that patents and copyright should be the same, I'd argue that you should be able to capitalize on a patent or a copyright in 5-10 years. If it becomes though, there is the extension period, but should that go for patents as well? Wouldn't all companies just do that for everything then? If you think of tech and trends that moves so fast, doesn't that seem reasonable? If the end goal is competition amongst composers while still giving a head start to the holder, a short copyright period will give you that, I think.
there's a pretty striking illustration of what i would call hypocrisy in this realm. In the case of 'Moore v Regents of the University of California' a dude had some cells removed (without his knowledge or express consent) from which a very successful and lucrative cell line was developed to be used in medical research. The courts engaged with the argument that since this was such a positive development for science, that outlawing this would not be beneficial. But in the Biz markie case (a decade or so later) 'grand upright studios v biz markie (well his record company)' the judgement began with 'Thou shalt not steal!' The court did not engage with the arguments you mention and provided a completely unsatisfactory account of 'creation' against 'discovery'. An even more harmful aspect of this 'enclosure of the creative commons' is the granting of patents to genetic material (again with a dubious distinction between creation and discovery). Due to this, monsanto etc. own the rights to about 40% or so seeds. It all fits into the larger enclosures movement, where what was a non-commodity (e.g. water) is turned into property, with the associated right of excluding the rest of the world from the enjoyment of it. The creative commons is being enclosed. 'And still the geese a common lack/Until they go and take it back!'
I feel that the worst of the problem is not the copyright law itself, but overreach in the application and enforcement of the law. The "Blurred Lines" case is a particularly egregious case where a judge found infringement that lay far outside those aspects of a song that are traditionally considered copyrightable. You mentioned the fact that fair use protection exists, but isn't being used to protect artists making transformative works. And it isn't just in the courts that this happens. Here on RU-vid, videos that should clearly enjoy fair use protection for using examples of copyrighted music in an educational or critical context are subject to "copyright strikes" and being blocked. This has apparently ramped up in recent months, as there has been a recent flood of complaints from video makers showing how even using a few seconds of an identifiable riff to demonstrate the sound of a new guitar product will result in a copyright claim.
A member of my choir was in another choir before and putting on a Disney concert. Disney forced them to change the wording on their posters to not include the name "Disney" so they had to call it something like "famous songs from cartoons". Yes we're talking about an amateur choir performing mostly for family and friends. The present choir is constantly on the hunt for copyright-free songs to record for promotion even going so far as making a new arrangement for our national anthem lol. If I ever make anything worth listening to it will be under a cc licence...
Ah, so now copyright law goes as far as even controlling what tunes we can and can't perform in concerts, even if it's just for family and friends. How awesome is that? Not! :/ This is why copyright law is bullshit nowadays. It's as if you can't even perform songs you enjoy, out of fear of getting in trouble with copyright shit... even if it's not for profit. Lol! Garbage! The fact anyone could even view this as "normal" just shows what a bunch of mindless fucking idiots our society has become, our fucking idiot lawmakers included. In fact, I'll even go as far as to say that the idea that you have to obtain a "license" or something, or otherwise get permission, to perform a cover of a "copyrighted" song is probably a fucking stupid myth that someone made up that's not even true. But if this is really what's required "by law"... then I say fuck it. Fuck that stupid law. A mindless asshole created that law ( or maybe a bunch of mindless assholes), so why follow their agenda? No point in it. Anyone with logic and reasoning would know how idiotic that is. Just because you perform a "copyrighted" song in a concert or talent show or whatever, really doesn't inherently fucking mean you're stealing it. You can't inherently "steal" a song... you can only truly "steal" physical property. Songs aren't physical. Ideas aren't physical. If I "steal" your chair, you no longer have a chair to sit on. But if I simply reproduce or reuse a song/or musical idea you created, it's not like the idea no longer exists with you... it's in your fucking brain. And it may be recorded in one way or another. That's not fucking stealing, at all! The only time there's really something that's more like "stealing" in music is if I actually claim that the song is my own creation when it's really not, which is obviously a fucking wrong thing to do... anyone with common sense and good judgment would know that that's wrong. That is actually "stealing". Why the fuck is it not enough, then, to simply credit you for making the song when I then perform it for my concert? We do this when we quote written/or typed text and there's nothing wrong with it, so why should it be so incredibly different with music? It shouldn't, period. Oh, let me guess: just crediting the artist is not "profitable", right? Of course! It's always about the "money". Well... greediness isn't fucking moral. But society doesn't give a fuck about moral values. What a shame! :/ OK, rant over :)))))
I live n Germany, and over here, we have Urheberrecht (literally "creator's right") instead of copyright. Unlike copyright, Urheberrecht kann never be sold away, it always stays with the creator, a publisher can only obtain a license. However, Urheberrecht doesn't come with anything resembling a fair use clause, you can't do anything with somebody else's works unless you ask their permission first. If a creator dies, their next of kin inherit the Urheberrecht to their works. It expires 70 years after the creator's death. In fact, most intellectual property laws in continental Europe work more or less like this, putting emphasis on the rights of the original creator, not the publisher, unlike Anglo-Saxon copyright.
Creative Commons and Open Source are derived from Free Software and the work of the Free Software Foundation, and there are essays on the FSF's website that are definitely worth reading.
Really interesting! I thought you would talk as well about how RU-vid is handling copyright. It seems crazy to me that a whole video can be demonetized after 3 seconds of music or just by playing one chord and saying the name of the song on the video, this is happening right now and it's unfair to have a whole video taken down due a 0.5% of video where you played some chord.
I agree with your assessment! I really appreciate that Sheet Music Plus has made songs available through ArrangeMe. We need something like that in the Western art music world.
You've managed to voice what I couldn't articulate, I've always fallen back on 'copyright is only used by those who are evil', it just never felt right. Your points on the stifling of creativity and nothing really is original combined, could be construed as an argument for why the quality of music today is just utter trash. Personally imo, an invention has more weight to our species than a bloody waltz, thus 20 years after release, done, thank you for playing. If we could get legislation to set some precedents on fair use, we could stop this, or marvel will sue every blogger because spiderman is written in english, and these bloggers are writing in english which will be copyright infringement. the subject of copyright makes me rage into my ultimate form faster than anything
Another answer to this is composers being their own publishers. As a composer myself, I have no idea how to do this. It is so confusing and nobody has ever given me a straight answer about how to go about doing so. I also feel that the art should be copyright until the artist's death, but that the artist themself can choose whether or not someone else can use their work.
Regarding your argument about fixing compensation (10:02): Why should Congress legislate the amount an artist should receive for his/her work? Do you want Congress instead of a company to legislate the amount you get paid working in that company? An artist should be free to set his/her price, and the other party can choose whether to take it or leave it, as with any other business transaction.
Individual artists have no bargaining power against companies. None at all. The point of Congress setting this rate is that government is supposed to stand for individuals. If you prefer, Unions could be doing those negociations but same thing, companies have nothing to win by allowing use of samples so they could just as well set maddeningly high rates and keep discouraging use of sampling. It's a good idea if you suppose the rights holder is an actual person. The reality is its probably a giant like UMG who doesn't care about artists and will crush everything that doesn't bring it profit. Really the question should be asked the other way. Do you really want an undemocratic profit driven superpowerful company to be driving bargains?
Gershwin himself incorporated (sampled) classical and popular songs in his 1928 song "Musical Bill of Fare." It uses Wagner's "Song to the Evening Star," Silesu's "A Little Love a Little Kiss," Verdi's "La donna e mobile," Saint-Saens' "Softly Awakes My Heart," and "John Brown's Body." Hear it here: gershwin100.wordpress.com/2018/10/09/musical-bill-of-fare/
Hey David, I had no idea that you run 8notes. Pretty cool! My fear of a copyright reform is as follows. Suppose we have a system where 1) you can create a remix or fair-use of any copyrighted work, 2) the content owner is automatically alerted to your use of their work, 3) the content owner can demand you share the revenue from your work in proportion to how much of your work contains theirs. In theory this "do first, ask later" system is ideal. It solves all the concerns you raised about copyright impeding creativity and innovation. For example, a hip hop artist wouldn't have to chase down and clear individual samples. They could just create and worry about paying the artists they sampled if their work becomes a hit. But you may have realized this is very, very close to we have on RU-vid right now - that RU-vid is effectively experimenting with a new form of copyright enforcement - and the real beneficiaries are the tiny handful of publishers who squat like dragons on a gigantic hoard of copyrighted work and have come to view dispossessing RU-vidrs of ad revenue as another automatic revenue line next to Spotify and iTunes. As long as we have copyright, the benefit will flow to the mega powerful publishers who are able to make copyright operate AT SCALE - the people who can turn copyright into a business. That excludes creative artists except for the very few who have had hits that last across multiple decades of sales & licensing (The Beatles, Michael Jackson, etc). But as a film/TV composer, I don't see the status quo as negatively as you do. For instance I'm a member of ASCAP, a "dragon" of copyright that collects royalties from film, tv and radio use that I would never be able to chase down myself.
It's interesting, too, that you have to be careful with older classical pieces as well. The transcription and arrangement of the piece on the page is often copyrighted, so you have to be sure the printed version you're using is in the public domain.
I worked on a hip hop single in the 90s when the sampling legal landscape was still nebulous. The producer sampled some snippets from several records and got sued for $300 by another hip hop artist (no one you would have heard of) after it got some radio play. The Madonna samples and Erasure samples prominent on the track were ignored. Had the record been a hit we no doubt would have heard from more lawyers. This lesson changed me from a sampling glutton, sampling TV, movies, radio, etc. to a someone much more conscious and careful about using anyone else’s material. The $300 dollars was the only money anyone made.
Most all of the early rock n roll recordings from the 50s and 60s lifted ideas that were floating around, but never recorded (and sometimes actually recorded). If current law existed back then, most great rock songs would not have been allowed to be released. Crossroads by Cream took from a blues song that was recorded 30 years prior. And forget about Led Zeppelin. Their first three albums were basically all cover songs. And nowadays, no one defends their recordings from use like Led Zeppelin.
"Originality is the ability to hide your sources"... From what I understand, Walt Disney only paid Igor Stravinsky $100US for use of The Rite of Spring in his animated feature, Fantasia. And I understand that given the copyright treaties of the time, there was absolutely nothing Igor could do about it. There is also the practice of Hanna Barbera, where he joined ASCAP - though not a composer - and if a composer wanted to work for him, he would have to sign all ownership over to Hanna Barbera. So from this we can see that big time animators tend to be real skinflints... There is the quote of Stravinsky that I have heard: "A good composer imitates another composer, a great composer steals it". I take that as meaning that a great composer takes material from another composer, and uses it in such a superlative way that it becomes his/her own... Dave Van Ronk, although folk song versions existed before his playing of it, wanted to record his version of House of the Rising Sun, which his friend Bob Dylan took and recorded it on his first album for Columbia, without asking permission in advance. This caused Van Ronk to resent that Dylan's use caused people to believe that Van Ronk was copying Dylan whenever he performed it. Van Ronk got his payback when Eric Burdon and the Animals covered the song, making it so Dylan could no longer play it since people thought that Dylan was copying The Animals... This is all a manifestation of Corporate Culture, since this problem doesn't exist among indigenous and folkloric cultures...
Veey nicely put Bruce. Agree 100%. I would also add that while the publishing industry once was a powerful cultural development tool, this is no longer the case. This industry is today completely parasitic living on the shoulders of artists without prpviding anything. Thanks to the internet and in an information socoety, artists do not need publishers any longer. Their no-longer-existing role of "counterpart to artists" (which wss indeed very useful in the past) must now be taken up by (smarter) social networks to which artists can relate to valorize their work.
Copyright is not part of free market and capitalism. Copyright's the reason that there's too little competition and too high prices, so exactly not what capitalism stands for.
@@NoMastersNoMistress Of course, using the power of government isn't the only way to cheat in the market, but it is certainly the best, long-term, most effective way to do so. And copyright is a perfect example of that. Without government protection, how would copyrights be enforced?
If copyright is owned by a corporation and a corporation never dies, then copyright should last forever. That’s how they think, that’s what they want. Disney wants its “IP” to last forever and that’s what they’ll keep pushing for. Everything you’ve said makes sense, but there is no unstoppable force like a rent seeker trying to hold on to free money.
My main issue with Creative Commons is that it technically permits people to reprint your work for money without any compensation, and there's no such option to limit profiting off from material that isn't transformative. Regarding that, I've written my own rules for reuse, and contribution, since I'm working on open-source fiction, with the rules closely resembling LGPL. I still need a layer to write it in a more legal language.
I used to have little day dreams in music school, about an art music movement that would function like folk traditions, perpetuated by a huge population of amateur composers and instrumentslists.
David, you might find the ideas and films of American animator Nina Paley (maker of Sita Sings the Blues and Seder-masochism) to have a interesting relationship to the issues discussed in this video.
While this is subject to reform due to new information, insights, etc., I think this is my own take on intellectual property. 1) I do think that artists have the right to protect their own *expressions* of an idea as one should be entitled to the fruits of their labour. Wholesale copying or using a complete work should be under the control or given permission by its original author. 2) That's the extent of "copyright". It does not and should not give me the right to dictate to someone else how they should express themselves or lay claim to earnings from that work. If someone wants to quote from my work, fine (though some kind of citation or acknowledgement is nice and that's really all I would ask). 3) If you want things like licensing for synchronisation or permission to use audio recordings, I think the process should be ultimately simple and transparent since where it is right now, it varies from author to author.
As for the Blurred Lines situation, Robin Thicke shot himself in the foot with how he publicly described the process. Basically, if he kept his mouth shut (especially acknowledged he was not in a sober state of mind), the case would not have had any real weight and would have ruled in his favour. However, I also think it's ridiculous that that alone is grounds to claim copyright infringement as it is still a new work, no matter how similar sounding they are to each other. Plus I hear similar patterns between pieces at various points (how many times the descending chromatic bass line has been used: see Phantom of the Opera Overture compared to Pink Floyd's Echoes) but I'm not going to claim one copied from the other (or certainly lay financial claim to it). Now while the Bard has been dead for well over 130 years or so, can you imagine how many authors of *any* form owing money to Shakespeare for using *any* of his phrases.
Ideally, the best copyright law should forbid the unauthorized distribution of exact copies, but allow remixes/samples/edits/reorchestrations and other modified or transformative uses of the original creation. Basically like Fair Use, but slightly more permissive.
I do arrangements for band, brass quintet, orchestra, and the like, and copyright is a GOD DAMNED NIGHTMARE. I fully support drastically shortening the length of copyright, or, failing that, making "permission to arrange" a free and compulsory license. Nobody in their right mind is going to confuse a marching band arrangement of a pop tune for the original!
As a software developer, I definitely swing harder towards repeal. software is only benefited from being shared, and I imagine the arts would benefit much the same. Specifically, I'd prefer if there was no copyright whatsoever. not 30 years or 10 years. Society is growing faster and faster each decade, we only tie our hands behind our backs pretending that art ought to cost a generation before it can be shared. But of course, the stuff work at my employment is under heavy IP as well, so it's not something I can pretend I'm absolved from. In addition, I think the harder sell is for artists to get to the point of being able to use the creative commons license. Some are devoted or well off enough to use it, but often artists aren't paid well anyway, so they rely on copyright. So it's kind of a horrible catch 22: you want copyright to be less strict for your own benefit, but you also want to be financially successful. I think that's part of why copyright has gotten as bad as it has, because it hasn't gotten enough push back from those who would benefit most from lighter laws because of the need to survive/predictions of grandeur. Would be nice if that financial incentive to support copyright wasn't so strong. Perhaps if we taxed a certain under-taxed bracket of society that would hardly notice the difference, and spread that wealth around somehow...
@@davidschreiter3513 yeah, that's what I was failing to adequately get at with my second paragraph. Hard to push for change when you're starving, and the change makes you starve more
8notes.com. Noted. :) Being primarily a software developer myself, I can tell that the open source movement changed our life. And not only "us" software developers, but the whole world's. As such I fully support your views here. I have already seen a similar video from Adam Neely but yours really goes to the heart of the matter and yes, I do wish, having witnessed the change myself, that copyright of artistic works followed the lead of software development here (which is, even as of today, still fought over in spite of its obvious benefifs -- see Oracle vs Google).
In the US, copyrights directly violate the First Amendment to the Constitution: " Congress shall make no law...............abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press" In legalese, shall means must. It does not say you can speak, or publish freely so long as someone hasn't already copyrighted it. It also occurs to me that these protections were supposedly put in place to encourage creative endeavors, just like patents supposedly encourage innovation. Why then do drug patents only last 20 years? If it is true that these protections encourage advancement in their fields, then the fact that film rights and music copyrights tremendously out live drug patents shows a warped sense of priority among lawmakers.
Correct. Inventions and Innovations are always inspired by other works. Copyright is all about money. Competitions drive innovations. Copyright is very ambiguous in nature.
Patent law is actually causing all kinds of problems in our new digital world that might give musicians nightmares. Imagine recieving a cease and desist letter from some investment firm in Toronto claiming that they bought the exclusive rights to VI-ii-V-I in Db major over a Gb pedal 3 years before your piece illegally incorporated this unauthorized material. This is a reality for many, especially independent, software developers.
Wow super informative. I do think the Gershwin’s and Disney’s of the world need to not be alllowed to continually extend their copyrights especially since both parties stole heavily from other sources without crediting them. Gershwin’s and the Disney’s have profited a LOT and I think once the composer is dead their works should be in the public domain. I don’t think their heirs or grandkids should be able to profit off something they did X years ago and are no longer alive.
Indeed. Another way this affects composers badly is through the copyright on poetry and verse. This makes it hard for composers to create art songs using lyrics by people not personally known to them, other than authors dead more than 70 years. This cuts out a huge swathe of possible song-writing creativity, because, often, in my experience, the copyrights are owned by publishers or charitable foundations (authors’ associations and the like) who will not allow the words to be used on terms that are sensible for composers (i.e. not understanding that they are most unlikely to make any money on performances or recordings, and in fact more likely to have to finance them themselves). So it is now not possible to do any equivalent of what composers like Schubert, Schumann and Wolf did, for our own time, unless you are unusually lucky with the author or copyright holder. I think there is a case for copyright extending beyond the death of an author - if it benefits their spouse or partner, who may have been important in providing the environment for their creativity. But the 70 year rule results in copyright devolving to children and grandchildren, which is quite unjustifiable.
Thanks, I agree on both counts. The impossibility of finding relevant contemporary verse to set is incredibly difficult and frustrating (and is another lose lose situation), and agreed on the spouse/partner issue too, which is the only reasonable case for post-death continuation of copyright.
