Some sensible things happening over here in the rainy country. No copyright extension for songs reports the BBC. At present, copyright for artists (not the same as composers, who get 120 years of exclusive rights) extends for 50 years in Britain. Within this time artists can collect royalties for their performances whenever they are aired. In US of A this extension is for 95 years - which is, IMHO, greedy and that's what the British artists like Sir Cliff Richard want (the operative word is want. The other word to bear in mind is need, which does not apply in this case.) Of course, more than the artists, the record companies were the ones salivating for the extension.
An FAQ for the curious.
- Log in to post comments
More like this
Provocative title, eh? I expect many people to instinctively react as angrily to this as I do to the empty clause "intellectual property is property". However, the clause "copyright is censorship" is actually true.
What is copyright? It is a law passed by and enforced by governments that places…
I haven't always had as much concern about copyright infringement as I do now, but I've always considered it to be a given that copyright infringement involves taking something that doesn't belong to you without paying the owner. Taking something that doesn't belong to you without paying the owner…
From BBC News,
"With the fight against illegal downloading of songs starting to pay off, the music business has set its sights on a new enemy on the internet - websites which transcribe pop songs into musical notation."
Not content with suing Moms and kids who illegally download mp3s, the recording…
You might have noticed very little/no activity here over the past two weeks: partly this is because I'm very busy (preparing for Dinosaurs - A Historical Perspective, among other things), but it's also because I currently have no internet access at home. Sigh. In an effort to add something new,…