Professor Slams European Commission For Ignoring The Evidence On Copyright Extension
from the it's-not-about-evidence,-it's-about-campaign-contributions dept
We were pretty surprised a few weeks back when the European Commission endorsed a plan for copyright extension, despite ample evidence that retroactive copyright extension is a bad idea. Soon after that announcement, a group of European academics sent a letter warning that such extension would harm innovation. The academics keep piling on, as Professor Bernt Hugenholtz, the director of the University of Amsterdam's Institute for Information Law (IViR) has sent an open letter to the Commission blasting them for ignoring all of the research showing that copyright extension is bad. Specifically, Hugenholtz is amazed that the Commission relied only on reports prepared by industry, and willfully ignored research prepared by independent academics, such as his own group, claiming that by ignoring such studies, the Commission has a clear intention to mislead the rest of the EU by hiding the research that shows why copyright extension is a bad idea.
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Filed Under: copyright, copyright extension, eu, europe, innovation
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Ok, wait
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What a corporate little money can do
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Re: What a corporate little money can do
Oh, and probably the guys who own the rights to all those songs by that silly Beatles band.
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Re: Re: What a corporate little money can do
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Re:
Actually, in Europe, they do take these things pretty seriously.
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Re: Re:
The linked article suggests otherwise.
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Re:
Looks like you are a few fries short of a happy meal
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Incomplete theory
Hugenholtz is right... but it goes further than that.
Extending the term of copyright is bad. That much is clearly true. The next conceptual step that needs to be taken is to consider that reducing the term of copyright is good. As long as:
a) it's renewable; and
b) there's a 'use it or lose it' clause.
I wrote a post recently called How long should music copyright be? where I explain, and argue in favour of a 5 year renewable term.
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Re: Incomplete theory
Why is that...?
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Re: Re: Incomplete theory
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Re: Incomplete theory
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Re: Re: Incomplete theory
His view in some regards mimics what US Copyright Law entailed prior to 1/1/78. The law embodied formalities that when met provided a 28 year copyright term, with the possibility of one extension for an additional 28 years.
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academics v commission
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