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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
For the last decade, the Congressional debate over copyright law has been in a stalemate. Content companies have pushed for stronger protections, but their efforts have been stopped by a coalition of technology companies and digital rights groups.
But on Tuesday, we saw a rare moment of bipartisan and trans-industry harmony on copyright law, as the Senate unanimously passed the Music Modernization Act, a bill that creates a streamlined process for online services to license music and federalizes America's bizarre patchwork of state laws governing music recorded before 1972. That will mean effectively shortening the term of protection of older music published between 1923 and 1954—under current law, these songs may not fall into the public domain until 2067.
The bill managed to get the support of several groups that are normally at each others' throats: music publishers, record labels, songwriters, major technology companies, and digital rights groups.
The bill isn't perfect, but Public Knowledge—a digital rights group that usually opposes legislation sponsored by big content companies—gave the bill its endorsement, describing it as a "significant step forward for music consumers and fans."
The Senate must now negotiate with the House, which passed its own version of the legislation earlier this year. Public Knowledge was not a fan of that legislation because it keeps pre-1972 sound recordings out of the public domain for much longer. The big question now is whether the final version of the bill will look more like the consumer-friendly Senate version or the more industry-friendly House legislation.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 4, Insightful) by pTamok on Thursday September 20 2018, @12:52PM (2 children)
EFF - The New Music Modernization Act Has a Major Fix: Older Recordings Will Belong to the Public, Orphan Recordings Will Be Heard Again [eff.org]
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(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 20 2018, @02:25PM (1 child)
186 pages for something that needs one paragraph at worst. Something is broken, captain.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 21 2018, @09:13AM
Oversimplification - don't do it just because you don't understand it. Laws are written in detail to prevent grossly incorrect interpretations by the court at a later date. Some of the things that are required are definitions to make everyone happy. English (or other human natural languages) tends to not be a very precise language.