Once Again, Dead Content Creators Seem To Sign A Lot Of Pro-Stronger Copyright Petitions

from the funny-how-that-works dept

Fri, Sep 24th 2010 4:44pm — Mike Masnick

Four years ago, as the debate over copyright extension was going on in the UK, some people noticed that a petition from "artists" that was sent to the government had a bunch of signatures from artists who were dead. Apparently, they wanted copyright protection from beyond the grave. That worked so well in the UK, that it's apparently been expanded to all of Europe. We recently noted that the pro-stronger copyright Gallo Report was approved by the EU Parliament, but now some are noticing that the petitions in favor of it, once again, appear to have included at least one dead filmmaker. Separately, some noticed that the signatures appeared to include a disproportionate number of Hungarians, so Amelia Andersdotter decided to contact a few of the Hungarian filmmakers listed as having signed the document, and they told her they never signed any such thing. Other petitions show similar oddities, including content creators who have come out in favor of file sharing and those not even in the EU. From the looks of things, there's at least a pretty strong appearance of various industry groups simply signing the names of a long list of filmmakers and musicians to pad the listings...

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Filed Under: copyright, gallo report, petitions, politics

26 Comments

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Marcus Carab (profile), 24 Sep 2010 @ 4:20pm

Is it possible that some performance rights organizations have a membership clause that allows them to sign petitions on your behalf? Or that they act as though they do? Even copyleft artists are often still members, especially those who have only recently discovered the other half of the copyright debate. The dead artists could then come down to poor record keeping in their lists, and sloppy administration like that seems right up the alley of most PROs.
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TtfnJohn (profile), 24 Sep 2010 @ 5:04pm

They just know that the deceased creators would have signed the petition in a nanosecond. Trust me, they know!

They also know that half of Hungary would have signed the petition if they'd only known it was there instead of going back in their family trees to Attila the Hun.

(In fact Hungary is where Attila's Hun's settled after he scared the crap out of Rome.)
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Anonymous Coward, 24 Sep 2010 @ 5:05pm

Re:
Or just good ol' dishonesty, but I guess we will never know for sure so people need to make an educated guess to what really happened.

My bet is total dishonesty.
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NAMELESS.ONE, 24 Sep 2010 @ 5:14pm

isnt it a federal offense to impersonate?
Isn't it a federal offense to impersonate?
This may also be fraud and racketeering as there is profits to the people commuting the offense.

sign your us govt is totally corrupt...nothing will happen
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NAMELESS.ONE, 24 Sep 2010 @ 5:15pm

oh so hollywood can sign anmyones name now?
wonder what banks think of this practice?
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Scott Lucas, 24 Sep 2010 @ 5:17pm

I don't know any of the legal stuff behind it, so I could be wrong... but isn't signing someone else's name on a legal petition, without notifying them or asking for their approval, some sort of legal or identity fraud? If so, this could horribly backfire in a heartbeat.
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arena, 24 Sep 2010 @ 5:37pm

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Esahc (profile), 24 Sep 2010 @ 5:43pm

Re: isnt it a federal offense to impersonate?
"sign your us govt is totally corrupt..."

FYI this is Europe
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Christopher (profile), 24 Sep 2010 @ 5:48pm

If this is found to be true, what TechDirt thinks that they were doing? It is a CRIME to falsify documents given to the government, so these organizations might be cruising for a big old criminal bruising.
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abc gum, 24 Sep 2010 @ 6:27pm

I'm shocked and dismayed.
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Anonymous Coward, 24 Sep 2010 @ 7:07pm

Dead people have rights too you know!!
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Anonymous Coward, 24 Sep 2010 @ 7:07pm

Also, I bet you I can get more dead people to sign my petition than you can to sign yours.
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Jay (profile), 24 Sep 2010 @ 7:24pm

Re:
But then they can't pay the politicians off.
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Anonymous Coward, 24 Sep 2010 @ 8:03pm

Re:
I wonder if dead people can create petitions too. Or maybe someone can write a petition on behalf of a dead person. It could be the petition that would be a petition that the dead person would start if s/he had been alive.

Perhaps then dead people could get their dead friends to sign it. They can start a dead persons lobby. What would it be called? The American Association of Dead Persons (AADP)?
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Anonymous Coward, 24 Sep 2010 @ 8:44pm

Re:
The dead own nothing.
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BearGriz72 (profile), 25 Sep 2010 @ 1:03am

Re: Re:
Living Impaired Persons Association of America (LImPAA)
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harbingerofdoom (profile), 25 Sep 2010 @ 7:16am

Re: isnt it a federal offense to impersonate?
+1 reading comprehension

/snark-o-meter
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Wesley Parish (profile), 26 Sep 2010 @ 3:08am

Any surprise?
It should come as no surprise - according to Henry Carey's son, Henry Carey wrote a major part of "God Save The Queen" in 1745, at least a year and a half after he had died in 1743.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Carey_%28writer%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Save_the _Queen

That's why I argue that it should be recognized as an example of the genre ghoulmusic - music to stir the ghoul!

But the woman's got ghoul
Worth all money and gold
And all the love that I have belongs
To the woman with ghoul

The woman's got ghoul, yeah
The woman's got ghoul
The woman's got ghoul

Speaking facetiously, though, shouldn't someone in Europe take said industry groups to court for - among other things - bringing the institution of petitioning governments for redress, into disrepute? Shouldn't someone in Europe take the various governments to court for bringing themselves into disrepute?
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hmm, 26 Sep 2010 @ 8:28am

one small step...
It's only one small step from **IA etc faking signatures on a petition submitted to government, to faking votes in an election to get copyright-supportive people elected...

Unless this of course has already happened (quite likely given the push for e-voting machines).....
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DB, 26 Sep 2010 @ 11:47am

Petition Signatures
Those of us familiar with Chicago politics don't find anything surprising about the dead signing petitions. What's more surprising is that someone actually relies on them.
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DB (profile), 26 Sep 2010 @ 11:56am

Petition Signatures
Those of us familiar with Chicago politics don't find anything surprising about the dead signing petitions. What's more surprising is that someone actually relies on them.
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Sep 2010 @ 9:48pm

Re:
"but isn't signing someone else's name on a legal petition, without notifying them or asking for their approva"

Well, maybe they went up to the dead persons grave, notified them, asked for their approval, received no objection, and figured it was OK to sign the petition on their behalf.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Sep 2010 @ 3:34pm

Time for a Business Model patent
Petition Preparation and Presentation 101:

1. Get listing of all 'living impaired' residing in graveyard.
2. Stand in middle of graveyard and announce, I'm filling out a petition for XXX, anyone residing in these premises who doesn't want to be included as a signor on the petition, please speak up now, or notify me after the reading.
3. Read petition and ask for any objections.
4. Sell 'completed' petition to organization wanting bogus results/response/etc.
5. Profit....
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hoqqie, 11 Feb 2011 @ 7:36pm

Humanity
Nothing can own by the "dead" :)
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tony of bohol philippines, 16 Feb 2011 @ 7:06pm

copyright
I have also some articles that was being copied by strangers in the net but I can't sue them because they are far country and if I will sue them in court it takes months or years and money and not sure also if it can be prosecuted so in short it so hard really handle like that situation.
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impagados, 16 Feb 2011 @ 10:28pm

replied
and the human rights�?�?�
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