Charlie says 95, Ars says 50. Well, I say 30.
The lunacy of extended copyright and patent terms, the most threatening aspect of modern society with regards to freedom of information, progress, innovation and business comes to Europe, courtesy of Mr. Charlie McCreevy, the EU’s Internal Market Commissioner.
What Mr. Creevy seems to completely ignore is that the European Union is a completely different market and a different socio-political entity to the U.S., where extended copyright terms are already in place and the patent hell has already resulted in a vastly diminished cultural output1. And while in the United States there’s increasing concern among academics, lawyers and even corporations (with the exception of the few colossal ones that stand to benefit) regarding the country’s IPR legislation, many of the corporations controlling cultural output globally are European and would certainly like to see things change in Europe too. Given the radical change that the music ‘industry’ has been facing in the past decade, a proposal for the extension of the copyright term for music to 95 years by Mr. Creevy seems like a thinly concealed attempt by panicked record companies to hang on to whatever legislative vehicles are available to them in order to conserve a flawed and harmful (for everyone, but them) status quo.
If anything, the copyright term should be reduced and should be accompanied by an overhaul of the intellectual property rights mechanism that — to this day — keeps musicians from enjoying the wealth that they deserve by forcing them to share the vast majority of the profits of their work with dozens of intermediaries, IPR management, marketing and promotional companies (the ‘industry’).
- The main argument here is that with a more liberal legislative framework governing intellectual property in the United States, the cultural output of value, other things being equal, would be considerably higher to what it is under the dominance of a handful of multinationals and the unabated commercialisation of the main forms of art.
I truly doubt any independent labels, or artists, or even the common man has *any* leverage over policy making over this issue. The commissioner, who we should not forget, is appointed and not voted for, is probably talking to the wrong people. In a few years when these few multinationals will bankrupt and stop having such a big leverage a new equilibrium point might be reached.
Γιώργο, I never claimed — or even hinted — that ‘independent labels, or artists, or even the common man’ had any leverage over policy making in this case. I do, however, for the record, believe that they do, even if that was not the point of the article.
I’m not so sure that the appointment of election of a commissioner is a major issue here — commissioners can only propose legislation, not pass it; given the record of elected national politicians in similar cases, appointment vs. election seems to have minimal importance: Lawmaking at the Pan-European level is the task of the European Parliament, which is elected and (in principle) accountable for its actions. Given the past ’successes’ of small business, academia and the ‘common man’ in convincing the Parliament (viz. software patents — disregarding the numerous and substantial controversies of that case), I still have a small token of belief on the power of the ‘common (wo)men’ in this continent. If anything, it seems to me that the ‘common man’ is much more powerful when compared to his/her U.S. counterparts in this respect.
In any case, I agree with you that most people probably don’t have much leverage, but that’s probably due to their indifference and lack of information and not their ability (or lack thereof). Hopefully, the momentum of the ‘internet revolution’ is going to be such that our little discussion here will prove meaningless before too long.
Cosmix, I think I see your point. What I tried to point out is that was the commisioner responsible for I.P. in E.U. *directly* elected then maybe we could have some saying. Now it is a long chain until he reaches to the people, and many “interested parties” get in the way.
I doubt the “internet revolution” will reach policy making any time soon. The recent example of France’s “illegal downloading” law is an example where, for example Fnac had much more say in the drafting than for example Free (which so far seems to have a good privacy record.). Of course we could have an exception and a slashdot user gets appointed commisioner.
My view is that these matters are mostly decided on the other side of the atlantic, and then decisions spill over. Given that, I would put my money on Obama on having a sensible approach, for example given his recent (and previous) voting on the tel. companies senate “spying bill”. In reallity I do not think anyone can actually change the current situation.
On the other hand the E.U. does *not* have any trully big company , such as Disney, that holds many copyright works about to expire. It does have some public companies such as television channels who could benefit from an open minded approach to copyright. In all honesty I can not make an educated guess.
In a way, it is sad that in Greece, there is not discussion about these things. The recent story ot ert-archives is an example, where most of the discussion revolved about the exclusion of Linux as an O.S., and a few people blogged about the licences as well, and gave a bigger picture perspective. If I remeber correctly you had a really nice post.
(BTW, ert-archives still does not work under linux by just clicking, and I do not have time to teach my mother to hack her way through… )
I believe that it’s easy to blame the system to cover for inaction. I believe that nagging your MEP or sending a letter signed by thousands/millions to the European Parliament, let alone supporting MEPs with known and acceptable positions in such issues are vastly underestimated mechanisms. I’m not sure that an elected Commissioner, just by virtue of their election and not appointment, would take a more ethical position and not be swayed by big business, or that they would be open to discussion with the public, more than they are today.
This is not true. Ironically, the vast majority of the ‘big 4/6′ music/film conglomerates belong (or include to a substantial extent) European owners: Vivendi, EMI, SonyBMG and all their subsidiaries for example. That — alone — is something like 20-30% of the market in film and more than 60% of the market in music.