I don't understand how you can say that Copyright laws corrode creativity. Just knowing that I will be able to receive royalties on the music i create makes me want to create and feel appreciated for doing the work and being original. I don't understand why it inhibits creativity to pay publishing royalties to an artist who's work you admired enough to sample. That just sounds like greed to me. "I know you wrote and recorded that but I want to use it and not pay you for it and have other people pay me for it". If you are saying that copyright inhibits blatant plagerism which in turn inhibits creativity well to that I say "damn straight". Creativity is about doing something new not about stealing another persons good idea and making money off of their actual creativity.

This guy just got a DMCA takedown notice and cease and desist from Edison's estate.

http://bio16p.lbl.gov/Tinfoil.html

This article is an incoherent mess.

agreed.

wow, just wow on the headline fishing...

Copyright law --- as it stands right now --- is not increasing creativity at all.  Just consider that bands don't make any money (mostly), the vast majority lose money.  It's not like a pharmaceutical company protecting their patents.  

So why is it 120 years?  Disney and major corporations.  There's no other reason.  It's not about art.

I agree with this.  Here's a question: if there was no copyright at all, would art suffer?  

Or, how about this one: if copyright terms were a lot shorter, would art suffer?  or maybe improve?  It could be a renaissance we're stifling here and suffering as a society.

what if there was a limit on how long you could own property you purchased? (a computer, land, a car)?    

by having an expiration date, copyright is unfairly treated when compared to material things. 

There is my dear. Unless you live in a country where there is no taxes on wills.

120 years after the passing out of a buyer of real estete, his children or grand children are in majority, unable or unwilling to pay for propertty taxes, tasxes on successions etc etc. The property will be taken and sold to pay the debts.

not really an expiration date, if you keep paying the taxes it´s still yours. still more fair to own land than to own a copyright. 

I would support this. Put a $5000 property tax on coyrighted works that increases 5% every year. If you don't pay it, you lose the copyright.

Also government officials will review each copyright application and decide weither to issue a permit for that work, limiting the use of the work to only what is permitted on the permit (ie. you are only allowed to play the song X number of times in only Y different places). Typically they base things on what they feel is in the best interests of the musical community.

Artists should have to reapply for permits based on any given use of the work, for instance if they want to use in a commericial or sing it in authorized places. Violations of permits should incur big fines.

I like the way you think.  

Although, if you replace government and tax with record label and recoupable advance you will find that this system already exists.

Also violations are taken care of by RIAA etc

So, you want musicians (whose works have been constantly devalued through the digital age) to further devalue their works and have less rights to their creative property.  Maybe someday you'll actually create something other than a lame and uninformed comment and will know what it's like.  Let's just take all the rights away creators so that Google can make more money. 

How about I go write a jingle for Ford, but instead of writing something myself (actually working) I just play a Beetles song and collect all the money for myself instead of paying the people who wrote it?  That's fair, right? 

Who's going to invest in the creation of music when there's less and less ways to profit from the investment?  Have fun ruining an art form.

It's bewildering to me that a pharmaceutical patent lasts for 20 years when a copyrighted piece of creative work stands for life+70 or 120 years. Corporations often spend billions of dollars, and sometimes ten years or more developing a drug & getting it FDA approved. If it's a matter of risk or motivation, it should be the other way around. And yet it's understood that the world benefits when the patent expires after the company has had a chance to recoup its investment and to make a profit, even if there's only 8 years of market life left on the patent by the time the drug actually hits shelves. The copyright laws were obviously designed with content owners in mind, who are more interested in hoarding everything for as long as they possibly can, rather than than content creators, consumers, or culture at large.

So there is certainly justification for the argument that after 20 years we stand to benefit more, culturally, from the expiration of a copyright than the artist stands to gain from retaining copyright, & 20 years is plenty of time for a copyright owner to recoup its expenses & make a profit (otherwise the problem is with the business model, not the copyright laws). What percentage of copyrighted works created today are going to be properly administered in 3012? When they could potentially become a part of the fabric of our culture, they'll instead sit, locked off from the culture at large, unappreciated, on some intern's list of works to file DMCA claims on, actually costing the copyright owners more in administration than they're generating. But no one's going to go through & make the call on what work is actually going to be worth retaining a copyright on. We see this already in Brooks' study, but, considering the amount of creative work being released now, the problems are going to explode during the future. So much is going to get lost if we don't rethink the way we approach copyright in this country.

But some thought has to be put into it. Personally, I think copyright should expire 20 years after publication, but I think that creative works should be protected from being used freely in advertising or marketing or politics for 70 years after publication.

But even during the life of a copyright, I think we have to make some adjustments on how we enforce copyright. For instance, an album like the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique, which is collage-based, couldn't be made today. And yet no one's going to buy Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun INSTEAD OF Mississippi Queen because they sample half a guitar lick. People are actually more likely to buy Mississippi Queen BECAUSE OF Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun. I think it amounts to whether or not a new work is in direct competition with the work being sampled, whether it's going to simply redirect profits from the original author or create new profits. That an artistically substantial record like Paul's Boutique couldn't be created today is tragic. No one benefits from that type of environment.

That's my two cents, anyhow.

Let's just deal with the patents comparison.  Sure, patent protection has a shorter term than copyright, but over that term it offers stronger protection.  It does not just protect the patent-holder against copiers, but against independent discoverers of the same 'invention' (e.g. a new pharmaceutical product).  Often, there are many different researchers and inventors trying to solve the same problem, e.g. in the 19th century, to create a cheap and durable electric light.  It is common for different inventors to find the same solution around the same time, as Swan in England and Eddison in the US both invented the light bulb around the same time.  But patent law dictates that the first inventor to lodge a patent application gets the monopoly, at least in the relevant jurisdiction. They continue to get the rewards of the monopoly during the patent term, even though it is highly probable that someone else would have independently made the same invention during that period.

In contrast, copyright law provides protection only against copying.  If someone can show that they have independently hit on the same idea, e.g. the plot for a novel, the fact that someone else has already published that plot will not give the latter protection.  Of course, in the arts there are not in general many people trying to achieve the same 'result', and the probability that two people will independently produce the same 'work' is relatively low, unless the 'work' is something as simple as a short chord progression or melodic phrase.  That is why the  courts tend to presume that an extensive similarity in two works is evidence of copying (possibly unconscious, as in the famous case of George Harrison's 'My Sweet Lord').

In brief, the differences between the fields of copyright and patent law are so fundamental that it makes little sense to compare the terms of protection.  Certainly there is no presumption that the terms should be the same.    

Absolutely, but they're both in place to ensure that creators, or owners of a creation or idea, are fairly compensated for the work that they put into creating, are they not?

They aren't the same thing, & the length of protection doesn't necessarily need to be the same, but for argument's sake, if you can't turn a profit on a work in 20 years, the problem is with your business model. Two decades ought to provide incentive enough for creators. Or maybe it's 3 decades, I don't know. The point is that life+70 or 120 is too long.

Of course there should be some sort of process to apply for an extension for, say... Rodriguez, or the estate of Nick Drake, where a case can be made that they will earn more money after the expiration of the copyright than during the protection, provided this case is made before the end of protection, or perhaps during some window after expiration.

And maybe if some sort of proof of sustained living off of a work can be proven, protection could be extended. But at some point the burden should fall on the owner of the copyrighted work to maintain the work or properly administer the work, or else they lose protections.

I'm not saying that artists or owners of copyrights shouldn't make a fair profit from copyrighted work, or that profits should necessarily be capped unfairly, I'm simply arguing that protecting a relatively small amount of works at the expense of a great amount of works, culturally speaking, is absurd.

Intersting artice Niko - but be warned, in Europe there is a now a new sound recording Term Directive  -and the term for copyrights in sound recordings is increasing from 50 years to 70 years for all European Community member states. This must be implemented by all member states by the end of 2013. More at www.the1709blog.blogspot.co.uk. 

there is far, far more music being created than ever before, so how is copyright limiting this, in any way? 

(and copyright does apply to books. i cannot simply re-type someone else's book (or a page from it) and say it is mine. however, i could take the theme/storyline, (say, detective uncovering clues) as inspiration and write a story similar to Sherlock Holmes. you can still listen to all those archives of spiritual music, folk music, etc.-- you can even sample them. Moby did, with permission. 

again, more music, (and visual art) being produced than ever before. copyright not limiting creativity. (unless you're talking about Rocky 6, etc.)

how would the author of this aritcle feel if i cut and pasted large portions of his writing, and sold it in a article published to Rolling Stone? Would he say, alright, you were very creative, glad you made some money, or would he cry "plagarism, pay up?"

No one is arguing that there shouldn't be a "balance between letting artists create and giving credit where it is due." What I find fundamentally flawed here is the argument that our copyright laws upheave this balance and disincentivize artists to create. While Niko points to a "correlation," lets remember our 10th grade statistical classes that taught us: correlation does not prove casuation. Niko can point to a correlation but he can not attribute a decline in new music to harsher copyright laws. As Niko pointed out, the market for music, film and literature is much more complex than it was in years gone by, increasingly digitial and there a multitude of factors that could be influencing or causing the change he is noting in musical creations. This line of thinking is so one sided. There are challenges artists must face to become successful so we should change the laws that make the industry more fair (and "gives credit where its due") because its hard? Any industry is hard and the testiment to a good, successful artist is their ability to navigate these "hurdles" and reach people with their music. Additionally, we cannot keep acting like financial reasons are irrational and should be discounted. Any business ever invented has a financial motive--that is one of the biggest incentivizers in the world. The fact that labels earn a profit from artists creations should also not be portrayed as irresponsibily as it is here. Artists are a large part of the equation in the music industry and so many anti-copyrighters have begun painting them as evil entities out to destroy artists. They make their living off of artists; theyre main priority is to make sure they succeed. But they also deserve some credit: a lot of the time, an artists success can be largely attributable to a label's work on their behalf. Finally, Niko managed to include one meager line regardin the "rampant piracy" in our music industry. Does he think that this phenomenon will decrease with more lax copyright regulations? I think its clear while there may always be room for improvement, the copyright laws are a necessary protection for artists and labels alike. 

There are two statements that need clarification: 

"This last point really speaks to today's digital age, where sampling others' works forms such a crucial part of pop music creation."

I don´t think sampling is crucial.  Is there any data regarding what percentage of new songs contain samples of others´ works? What do you mean by crucial?

"Yet today's system is based on strict prohibition of using copyrighted works, even for creative or interpretive purposes."  

Not true, mechanical licenses are compulsory, ASCAP, BMI and SESAC provide blanket licenses, masters can be licensed for a negotiated fee.  What do you mean by strict prohibition? 

Thank you, you are correct.

I don't think sampling was or ever will be a "crucial part of pop music creation."

and you can use other peoples work all you want, you just have to ask in writing and pay

Bull-crap article.

Copyrights have nothing to do with creativity.

It has to do with commerce and access to markets.

In the USA, it is part of antitrust (anti competition law). In other parts of the world, it is not part of competition law, but property.

the aim of copyrights is to forbid copies and usurpation of authorship, as well as "moral rights" a concept unknown in the US.

The article is very wrong and biased, in addition to being short sighted.

A rather lengthy article that can be reduced to one simple sentence:

There is no evidence that a 70+ year copyright term promotes creation of new works nor is there any evidence that a 70+ year copyright term inhibits the creation of new works.

the usual, tech assaults the music copyright with no solution using the artist's product as fodder for their own uses.

Nailed it!

Tech is getting unruly that now they're finally facing some accountability on the net after getting their cake for free for a decade with not so much as a peep about stealing everyone's royalties.

We as a collective of musicians should be able to cover and record any piece of music and earn from it. Its not fair that someone wrote the music and keeps all of the money from it.

We need to redistribute the wealth of all artists so we all prosper together.

get a compulsory mechanical license.  it costs 9.1 cents to record a copyrighted composition. 

Ah, the voice of reason!

The U.K. came up with a variable model back around 2008, that gave physical data an 8% royalty rate, with a 6.5% royalty rate for downloads and a 5.75% rate for streaming. Nothing is set in concrete with this form of creativity. We intend to make ALL People creative with their experimentation with sound concepts via our various Apps being created. [ http://cleblabs.weebly.com] has a temporary link overview. You can test sound concepts, save as your own work, Post for FUN or Profit to all manner of Social Networks, in one of twelve categories of "CELEBRITY": via "IPADHARMONY-C-LebLabs*TM. Save as Private Ring-Tones or Post for sale to your Fans. A working Musician may also test concepts in the market via 30 second snippets of sound, which if found popular may be withdrawn from the Private Cloud and further included within a major work they are creating, with the knowledge that a section of the work is already proven to be popular with a majority of the Public.                        (C) Copyright Paul Callanan 1987-2012_All Rights Reserevd.

I'm sure this story is pretty interesting, but...

"When too many font sizes and styles are used, it i

not so easy to follow for the reader."

http://cms.cnr.edu.bt/cms/files/docs/File/Tandin%20Gyeltshen/IMPROVING%20YOUR%20WRITING.pdf

and...

Watch out for too many font sizes. Just as deadly, using too many different font faces. Either can make the page hard to read. A good rule of thumb in traditional print design is two font styles and 2 font sizes, one for headlines and one for the body copy. While the web is a different medium and your font choices are much more limited the same can apply. Often you can say more with less. Try bolding or enlarging the headings and bolding various key words but keep the body copy all the same size. You'll be amazed at how neat and professional it can look.

http://www.thewritemarket.com/promotion/index2.php?writing=writestrategies&title=Web%20Writing%20Strategies

and...

1.      Too many font sizes

i.            Don’t let confusion reign.

ii.           It’s best to restrict your font sizes to two to maintain clarity and design simplicity.

iii.          One font for headlines; one for body copy.

iv.          You can bold or enlarge your headings, but keep all body copy the same size.

http://www.wordswords.com.au/2012/05/the-rule-of-two-less-is-more/

Ah the best advice is always free.

use Creative Commons licenses! Fast, easy and free:

about them: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/

license chooser: http://creativecommons.org/choose/

I say copyrights should be shorter in length, and when they become "public" domain, anyone using the sample should pay a fee or royalty to the government who in turn invests it in sponsoring artists---like some European nations do... At minimum artists should be tax exempt as cultural treasures do they can continue to create with dignity..

The author infers from one study claiming little evidence that extending copyright increases productivity to the unjustified claim that copyright is "corroding creativity".

There is no proof, no argument, nothing herein to justify this inflammatory headline. This is shoddy journalism at its finest, and the author should not be given a platform to write such inaccuracies.

- V

A few more points:

"This last point really speaks to today's digital age, where sampling others' works forms such a crucial part of pop music creation. Yet today's system is based on strict prohibition of using copyrighted works, even for creative or interpretive purposes."

No, it's not. One can cover and re-arrange existing music. See "compulsory license".

One can create derivative works.

Furthermore, one can sample works with permission. 

This is hardly "strict prohibition".

 "There should be a balance between letting artists create and giving credit where it is due."

There is.

- V

I never did understand the need for anyone to have 120 years of copyright protection, unnecessary and monopolising.