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LifestreamWhat an absurd thing copyright can be …
The single entered the British charts last week at No. 3. But for BMG, the company releasing the track, the celebration might be short-lived.
If there are no changes in European copyright law, the track will fall into public domain Jan. 1, 2005. Anyone will be able to release it without paying royalties to the owners of the master or the performer’s heirs. BMG will start losing a significant piece of its catalog income in Europe.
In the United States, BMG will continue to own the rights to the recording. Under the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, sound recordings are protected for 95 years from the day of recording in the United States — for post-1976 recordings, coverage is the artist’s life plus 70 years.
Not a moment too soon imo. This filthy business practise has to come to an end. For whom do these laws work anyway? Obviously none else than the record companies. What is the point for an artist to continue collecting checks when he or she is dead and buried? It’s a fair question. Some might say that it benefits the next of kin. Well, what kind of practise is that? What kind of employer will continue to pay salary for an extra 70 years after an employee has croaked? So in the end it is also a question of egalitarianism. But, it doesn’t matter, as we all know who takes the biggest slice of the earnings and leaves the change to be divided among artists and those other people. Be quick or be dead you know.
And still the biz keeps bullshitting us with illogical arguments. They say it’s an incentive. It’s a guarantee that we will get new and quality music. It’s the same shit I keep hearing from gambling firms just to produce one analogy. As Nietzsche would have argued, even seemingly good deeds and equitable laws are just window dressings for more sinister motives. In this particular case one very small percentage of the population is rewriting laws by upholding the fairytale that music is a business for everyone. Everyone can be successful. Everyone can win. Musicians are rich, sexy, popular .. and so can you. It’s like how gambling is perpetuated, how shoes and soda are marketed or the so called ‘american dream’ lives on. A true classic .. a relatively private minority perpetrates a false dream that gives them almost unbridled power. Be wary.
HatTip: Piratbyrån
Source: European Copyright Clock Ticking on Elvis Hits
