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posted by martyb on Monday May 21 2018, @12:35PM   Printer-friendly
from the Frodo^W-Mickey-Mouse-Lives! dept.

https://boingboing.net/2018/05/18/orrin-fucking-hatch.html

https://www.wired.com/story/congress-latest-move-to-extend-copyright-protection-is-misguided/

Almost exactly 20 years ago, Congress passed the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which extended the term of existing copyrights by 20 years. The Act was the 11th extension in the prior 40 years, timed perfectly to assure that certain famous works, including Mickey Mouse, would not pass into the public domain.

[...] Twenty years later, the fight for term extension has begun anew. Buried in an otherwise harmless act, passed by the House and now being considered in the Senate, this new bill purports to create a new digital performance right—basically the right to control copies of recordings on any digital platform (ever hear of the internet?)—for musical recordings made before 1972. These recordings would now have a new right, protected until 2067, which, for some, means a total term of protection of 144 years. The beneficiaries of this monopoly need do nothing to get the benefit of this gift. They don’t have to make the work available. Nor do they have to register their claims in advance.

That this statute has nothing to do with the constitutional purpose of “promot[ing] Progress” is clear from its very title. The “Compensating Legacy Artists for their Songs, Service, and Important Contributions to Society Act” (or CLASSICS) is as blatant a gift without any public return as is conceivable. And it's not just a gift through cash; it's a gift through a monopoly regulation of speech. Archives with recordings of music from the 1930s or 1940s would now have to clear permission before streaming their musical content even if the underlying work was in the public domain.


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Bean Dip on Monday May 21 2018, @02:23PM (4 children)

    by Bean Dip (5604) on Monday May 21 2018, @02:23PM (#682180)

    Your senators have a web site which make sending e-mail simple [1]. I used that web site this morning to inform Srs. Markey and Warren of my opinion. (Please feel free to personalize and use -- it is a shortened version of the EFF site.)

    I am writing today to ask you to reject S. 2823. This bill includes provisions known as the CLASSICS Act, which add new copyright restrictions to sound recordings made between 1923 and 1972.

    The state of the public domain in the United States already lags far behind that of other developed nations. Our current terms of author life plus 90 years are already a burden on the public. The CLASSICS Act gives nothing to the public domain. It does not increase access to sound recordings made before 1972. Instead, it burdens listeners, libraries, and educators with an expansion of federal copyright to this set of works. The primary beneficiaries of this Act are recording companies, who will gain control over the use of these classic recordings for another fifty years.

    The good people of the United States are sick and tired of these endless giveaways from our public domain. Please defend public access to our cultural heritage. Please reject S. 2823.

    [1] https://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm [senate.gov]
    [2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/05/keep-old-recordings-getting-new-and-confusing-copyright-law [eff.org]

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  • (Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 21 2018, @05:03PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 21 2018, @05:03PM (#682268)

    The good people of the United States are sick and tired of these endless giveaways from our public domain.

    Dear good people of the United States,

    The principal reason you are sick and tired is that you work a dead-end job with low pay, awful hours, zero promise of social mobility, and a pile of dung for health insurance. You are probably scratching your head right now, trying to understand the previous sentence, because you are also priced out of college education, so I will put it in words you can understand:

    The real reason you are sick and tired is because you are poor. And the only reasonable explanation for why you are poor is that you are a lazy bum. Why, if you were virtuous and hard-working, our merciful God would surely reward you with riches, and since He didn't, the conclusion is inescapable.

    So stop your moaning and get back to work.

    ~ Your Very Rich Republican Congresscritter

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 21 2018, @10:12PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 21 2018, @10:12PM (#682414)

    To a Congressscum, the only "good people" are the ones who include money in the envelope they mail in. Your high-tech email might get a form reply, then is immediately deleted, never having been read.

    Since money is speech in the U.S., it's the only language the Congressscum understand.

  • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday May 22 2018, @12:20AM (1 child)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Tuesday May 22 2018, @12:20AM (#682469) Journal

    Letters to our reps can help, if they're in large enough quantity. But the reform that most people here are debating, shortening the term, doesn't do nearly enough. Until it's legal to fully use our technology, until libraries are allowed to upload anything they have to anyone who wants it, and can have works the moment they're released, it's not enough.

    How is it ethical for the industry to do stunts such as the region coding of DVDs, and their general practice of releasing to theaters months before they allow rental and purchase of the content? Paywall publicly funded research? Sneak DRM onto media?

    The public doesn't demand enough, still doesn't realize the full extent of the rip off that's been perpetrated on us all.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 22 2018, @06:53AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 22 2018, @06:53AM (#682555)

      1) Stuff that's in envelopes and goes to Capitol Hill gets slowed down while it goes through screening.
      (Remember the Anthrax scare?)

      1a) Postcards are always better.
      ...and long-winded bloviation isn't any better than getting right to the point.

      2) Phone calls are not as impressive as hand-written mail, but they're still quite good.

      2a) If you set yourself up on a schedule, it gets to be an easy habit.
      Monday: Congressman
      Tuesday: Senator 1
      Wednesday: Senator 2
      Thursday: State Senator
      Friday: Assemblyman
      Let them know you're alive and what you think about what they're doing well or otherwise.

      3) Email ranks lowest in effectiveness.

      4) Mail/phone calls/visits to his|her -local- office actually has a bit better chance of getting the message through.

      3) Want to really get attention?
      Get together a crowd and go to the local office.
      Alert media beforehand about what you're doing.

      Most of this stuff was gleaned from listening to Ralph Nader's weekly Pacifica Radio program [ralphnaderradiohour.com] (which has webcasts available: KPFK, KPFA, KPFT, perhaps others I haven't found).
      After several weeks, he has a (searchable) PDF transcript of the show available as well.

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]