European Union is offering veteran musicians 70 yr copyright

[Don Parrish]

""As Mick Jagger and Bob Dylan prove they can rock the crowds well into their golden years, the European Union is offering veteran musicians a cash windfall by extending copyright from 50 to 70 years.

The measure seeks to ensure aging performers, who more often than not get their first break young, can survive once they've hung up their guitars in a last goodbye to the stage"".



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Veteran artists win 70-year copyright - Yahoo! News

[John Willett]

No - everyone - gets 70 years copyright - not just veteran musicians.

So some kid now, writing his first song will still have copyright in 70 years.

It's only fair - 70 years is about right for copyright to last the life of the author/composer.

[Floris van Eck]

I don't agree with this at all. Most of the songs you hear nowadays are stolen from other artists (or at least inspired on), and then they get a copyrighted. The Rolling Stones have stolen many country songs like this, Disney has stolen folk songs like this... I hate them for it. Disney is the one to blame... and I don't like that Europe is following the US with these ridiculous copyright laws (also see the patent wars raging in the mobile arena right now). There is a good documentary about this...

RIP!: A remix manifesto

[Andy Balla]

I'm a musician as well as sound guy, and I'd be happy to have a 70 year copyright. Ideas aren't stolen. They are borrowed, and remolded into something new. Nothing wrong with drawing inspiration from what came before. Aside from that, all of my music is up under the Creative Commons license, so it doesn't affect me. As Picasso said, "Bad artists copy, good artists steal".

[Steve House]

Originally Posted by Floris van Eck

I don't agree with this at all. Most of the songs you hear nowadays are stolen from other artists (or at least inspired on), and then they get a copyrighted. The Rolling Stones have stolen many country songs like this, Disney has stolen folk songs like this... I hate them for it. Disney is the one to blame... and I don't like that Europe is following the US with these ridiculous copyright laws (also see the patent wars raging in the mobile arena right now). There is a good documentary about this...

RIP!: A remix manifesto

There's a BIG difference between drawing inspiration from another artist's work, building upon his ideas and creating something new, and actually stealing the work itself.

Ideas themselves aren't copyrightable; it's the tangible expression of those ideas that is the property of the person who creates it.

[Brian Drysdale]

I believe this refers to the performance copyright, not for composing or writing the song or music, the proposal is for 70 years after the performance. The performance copyright on the Beatles is about to run out, but the concern is more for musicians who have only one hit that is still regularly played and will no longer have any earnings from it as they get older.

Copyright for writing the song continues 70 years after the composer's death.

[Steve House]

Originally Posted by Brian Drysdale

I believe this refers to the performance copyright, not for composing or writing the song or music, the proposal is for 70 years after the performance. The performance copyright on the Beatles is about to run out, but the concern is more for musicians who have only one hit that is still regularly played and will no longer have any earnings from it as they get older.

Copyright for writing the song continues 70 years after the composer's death.

There is no such thing as a copyright on a performance per se because performances are ephemeral, not tangible. A RECORDING of a perfomance is tangible and thus subject to copyright but the actual performance itself isn't and the copyright on recordings is typically owned by the label that released it, not the artist that performed it (unless the artist forms his own label to record and release his work). An artist singing a song on a stage doesn't gain any copyright rights by so doing. There are perfomance ROYALTIES which a venue must pay to the music publisher each time a song is performed publically but that's a consequence of the copyright on the song itself. The extension on copyright from 50 to 70 years being discussed is on the original composition and/or the recording - if the performer wrote his own music it will affect him, if he recorded someone else's music it won't. There were some recent changes(or proposed changes, not sure which) in the law in the States where the copyright on a recording passes from the label to the performer after a certain period of time - if that's the case in the EU, the extension should also affect those copyrights as well.

[Brian Drysdale]

Indeed it's the recording of the performance... I was being rather loose in the world of the law.