Why The Golan Case Matters: Pulling Works From The Public Domain Is A Massive Tax On Culture

from the a-big-problem dept

We've been covering the "Golan" case through the courts for quite some time now. This is an important case concerning the contours of copyright law and the locking up of the public domain. If you don't recall, the case involved whether or not it violates the Constitution to pull content out of the public domain. Certain foreign works that were in the public domain were put back under copyright due to a trade agreement the US signed a while back. Many who relied on those public domain works were left out in the cold. A district court agreed that this appeared to violate the First Amendment. However, the appeals court went the other way, with some troubling arguments about how it was okay to pull works out of the public domain, effectively because US copyright holders insisted that without this, foreign countries would "retaliate" against them, and thus it was okay for Congress to make this call. The Supreme Court has now agreed to hear the case.

The case is important for many different reasons, including helping to establish just what the "traditional contours" of copyright law are -- which is of key importance, because the Supreme Court has declared that copyright can't be expanded past the traditional contours without leading to greater Constitutional scrutiny. However, one thing we've noticed, is that copyright maximalists in our audience have brushed aside the Golan case as a minor concern because it impacted just a few works (foreign works) that most people probably didn't care about anyway.

Thankfully, there's an excellent piece at The Chronicle of Higher Education that both tells the story of Professor Lawrence Golan himself, and why this case matters, noting how the locking up of these works has serious impact on musicians around the country, effectively cutting off important pieces of culture from their repertoire:

That may sound abstract, but the impact on Mr. Golan was direct. When a work is in the public domain—that Puccini opera, say—an orchestra can buy the sheet music. Symphonies typically cost about $150. And the orchestra can keep those pages forever, preserving the instructions that librarians laboriously pencil into scores. But works under copyright are typically available only for rent. And the cost is significantly higher: about $600 for one performance. With the flip of a switch, the new law restored copyright to thousands of pieces.

For big-city orchestras like the New York Philharmonic, that change is like a "mosquito bite," Mr. Golan says. But Mr. Golan's university ensemble gets only about $4,000 to rent and buy music each year. That means it can perform some copyrighted works but must rely on the public domain for about 80 percent of its repertoire. And $4,000 is relatively generous. Other colleges might have only $500 to spend on music. When the Conductors Guild surveyed its 1,600 members, 70 percent of respondents said they were now priced out of performing pieces previously in the public domain.

Teaching suffers, too. Every year, for example, University of Denver students compete for the honor of playing a concerto, a piece in which the orchestra accompanies a solo instrument. But when a pianist wanted to audition with a piano concerto by Prokofiev, a Russian composer who died in 1953, Mr. Golan was forced to tell her no.

"It's one that any aspiring pianist needs to learn, and to have the experience of actually playing it with orchestra is phenomenal," Mr. Golan says. But "we just didn't have the money in the orchestra budget to pay the rental price."

It's great to see this case getting more (and more thorough) attention. Hopefully, the Supreme Court recognizes the significance of the case.

Filed Under: copyright, culture, first amendment, golan, public domain

Would It Really Be So Bad If The Beatles Were In The Public Domain?

from the probably-not dept

In our earlier coverage of Friday's hearings on how to fix the broken setup for copyrights on pre-1972 recordings, there was one point that I skipped over, because I thought it deserved a more focused discussion. In trying to make the point in favor of the RIAA's belief that the longer the copyright, the better, Jennifer Pariser pointed out that the best selling album from two years ago was The Beatles box set, and she asked: "Are we saying that should be in the public domain?"

Clearly, the point she was trying to make was that you never know what amazing works of history the major labels are suddenly going to dredge up and repackage in a profitable way -- and that's the reason why such works should remain under copyright (and under the control of the major labels) for as long as is humanly possible.

But does this make any sense?

I don't think so, and I think that a very strong argument can be made that things would have been just dandy if The Beatles' tunes had been in the public domain at the same time. The specific work that Pariser is referencing is The Beatles Stereo Box Set, which was released with a ton of fanfare in September 2009, at the same time as The Beatles in Mono box set, and The Beatles: Rock Band. And while it sold well, many people complained (reasonably) that they were basically offering the same songs all over again, in the RIAA's never-ending quest to make you keep on buying the stuff that you've already bought. In fact, many of the buyers almost certainly had all the works already. So why did they still buy it? Because the set itself was historic, complete and collectible in all sorts of ways that made it worth buying for fans of The Beatles.

The amount of work that went into making some of the early mono recordings stereo was apparently incredible, and the box set included a ton of valuable extras, including a DVD with narration from all four of The Beatles. There was additional footage from recording sessions, photo sessions and various other features as well. In other words, there were many reasons why people bought this box set, but I'd argue that access to the music wasn't near the top of most people's lists. They already had much of the music.

Furthermore, let's assume that The Beatles' works were in the public domain in 2009. Could EMI have still made a ton of money on such a box set? You bet. Again, by noting that it was the official version, remastered from as much original material as possible, and including all sorts of extras from The Beatles themselves, it means that there would be all sorts of reasons to buy the official version. If anything, having the recording be in the public domain might have resulted in more people working on attempts to turn the mono recordings into stereo recordings, which could have made such a box set available sooner, as EMI could have benefited from the work of others in the public domain as well.

The problem, yet again, is that Pariser and the RIAA keep pretending that the only reason people buy is directly for the recording. That's simply not true. They're also pretending that you can't make money from the public domain, which is also totally untrue. What bothers me is that Pariser and the RIAA are making these obviously untrue statements to policy makers, who might not be sophisticated enough to know that these statements are untrue.

Filed Under: copyright, jennifer pariser, public domain, the beatles

RIAA: Changing Copyright Term On Recordings Is Unconstitutional (But Only If It's Shorter)

from the double-standards dept

Ah, the RIAA is so full of double standards and hilarious hypocrisy that they almost make this kind of thing too easy. On Friday, we wrote about Thursday's hearings for the Copyright Office, concerning the question of what to do about pre-1972 sound recordings, which technically are not covered by federal copyright law, but instead aggressive state copyright laws that mean most such works won't hit the public domain until 2067 -- way beyond what it would be if they were under federal copyright law (assuming -- and this may be a big assumption -- that copyright terms are not extended again). Those hearings continued on Friday, and as with the day before, the RIAA provided all sorts of ridiculous quotes. Basically, anything that hurts the RIAA is pure evil, unconstitutional and damaging to culture -- even if the arguments are contradictory and go against what the RIAA argues on other issues.

Once again, my coverage is based largely on the excellent coverage from Copycense. I've collated some of the key tweets he made in covering the hearings at the end of this post.

Most of the ridiculousness came in the second session of the day, but there was one comment that deserved mention during the first session, when the RIAA rep on the panel claimed that "Given 'piracy' issues" the last thing that anyone should want is to reduce the terms of copyright. I'm trying to figure out what one has to do with the other. If anything, it seems like you could make a pretty strong argument in the other direction. The rise of widespread infringement suggests that the industry has failed to make works available to the public in a way that properly benefits the public. Thus, shouldn't we be making those works even more available? Either way, the statement from the RIAA here is a red herring. The idea of putting such works under federal copyright law would just bring those works in line with the already ridiculously long copyrights that the RIAA fought for not so long ago.

Then we get to the second panel, which focused on the Constitutional issues of fixing the excessive copyright issues for these works, with one key suggestion being to put those works under federal copyright law. Jennifer Pariser, from the RIAA -- the same woman who the day before had ridiculously and incorrectly insisted that the public domain had no value continued along that path again. She claimed that such a change to copyright law would lead to litigation and would be a violation of the takings clause (part of the Fifth Amendment). Basically, she was claiming that changing the terms of copyright on these works is the equivalent of taking away rights from the copyright holders and giving them to the public. In fact, she specifically claimed that "the less harm" you do to changing the term of copyright, the less of an issue there is. Hmm.

So, here's the question: where was the RIAA and Pariser on the issue of massive copyright extension over the last century? Oh, you guessed it, the RIAA has been totally supportive of it. So, you see, according to them, you can only ratchet copyright law in one direction. If you take away from the public (which copyright is supposed to benefit), that's fine. If you help the public... well, that's just downright unconstitutional!

Pariser also pushed on with the same claim from the day before about the lack of value in anything that goes into the public domain, and thankfully, others pushed back on that, pointing out (1) that copyright law was never intended to be set up so that the copyright holder got all the value out of the work and (2) no one was looking to make the works valueless, they were just talking about removing the monopoly, which from an economic standpoint makes a ton of sense.

Those same folks, usually representing libraries, pushed back on many of Pariser's points, highlighting that many of these works had already been covered by more than 120 years of copyright, and how much more do they realistically need? At that point, someone asked a perfectly relevant question: why should sound recordings get longer protection than any other work... to which Pariser responded (apparently with a straight face, though I'm not sure how), that the RIAA has "developed business models" around the extended length of copyright on pre-1972 sound recordings.

To put it mildly, this is laughable. The works that the RIAA labels are still making money on would still be under copyright for a long, long time (though, as we noted on Friday, perhaps the real fear from the RIAA is that under federal copyright law the actual artists and/or their heirs could reclaim the copyright). But the fact is, the vast majority of these older works are disappearing. To suggest that these copyrights should remain so long because of the record labels' business model is ridiculous.

Copyright law is not, was not, and has never been about protecting the record labels' business model.

If they did set up their business models based on this (and they did not), that should make NO difference. I mean, let's take that to the logical extreme. If we were to use the RIAA's own logic here, then that means the PROTECT IP Act should not pass, because it would impact the business models of other types of sites. And, according to the RIAA, no laws should change that impact someone's business models, right? I'm assuming this also means the RIAA is now against three strikes laws, ACTA, TPP and all sorts of other proposals that would negatively impact the business models of others, right?

And, just to cap off the ridiculousness, at the beginning of the following panel, an RIAA representative had the ridiculous gall to suggest that a change to how these old works are treated might decrease the availability of these old works since there wouldn't be the same incentive to produce sound recordings. I hope you weren't taking a drink when reading that, because it should have made you spit it out. The whole two day event was to discuss the very fact that so many of these works are disappearing, because the RIAA record labels are not making them available. The whole point of moving some of these old works into the public domain is so that others can make them available. And the RIAA is twisting that argument -- again apparently based on its ridiculously confused understanding of the public domain -- to suggest that even fewer works would be available if freed up. Thankfully others quickly pointed out that the issue is the works aren't available now. Hopefully, the Copyright Office properly discounted the RIAA's FUDful claims at the hearing, because they went beyond being just slightly misleading into being flat-out ridiculous.

Filed Under: copyright, length, public domain, takings clause, terms
Companies: riaa

Entertainment Industry Lawyer: The Public Domain Goes Against Free Market Capitalism

from the say-what-now? dept

We've been doing a series of posts about the Copyright Office's hearings on copyright for pre-1972 recordings, where we already noted with some amusement how the RIAA is suddenly afraid of federal copyright law, preferring the ridiculously more draconian state copyright laws that avoid both the public domain and termination rights. On top of that, we've pointed out that the RIAA's representative flat out claimed that there's no value in the public domain.

From Copycense's tweets, there was one other attendee who seemed to be even more extreme: Ivan Hoffman. Frankly, I'd never heard of the guy before, but you can visit his masterful website here, which looks like it was designed in the early 1990s and never updated. However, I must warn you that in the mind of Ivan Hoffman, you may be violating his copyrights just visiting the site. That's because, at the bottom of the website, it states:

© Copyright 1992-2011 by Ivan Hoffman. All Rights Reserved. No portion of this site, including this home page and any of the separate pages, may be copied, retransmitted, reposted, duplicated or otherwise used without the express written permission of the copyright proprietor. This site is the subject of registered copyrights.

A couple things on this. First, the statement borders on copyfraud (some might say it goes beyond the borders), in that copyright does not allow the rights he has claimed. You absolutely can copy portions of his website if you're using them (as I am here) in a manner consistent with fair use, or if the specific content copied is not actually subject to copyright (and one can make an argument as to whether or not the copyright statement above, itself, is actually subject to copyright). But, even more to the point, if you simply visit his website, you have "copied," "duplicated" and "otherwise used" his website without the express written permission. I'm sure someone could argue the retransmission and reposting too. After all, when you click on the link above (I hope that's not retransmitting or "otherwise using!") you are instructing your computer to make a local copy on your hard drive... all without his express written permission.

So, anyway, that gives you a sense of who we're dealing with here.

What did Hoffman have to say? Well, there were two separate points that seemed worth covering, which I've embedded below via Copycense's tweets, and assuming that Copycense's reporting is accurate (and I have no reason to believe otherwise), it makes you wonder why the Copyright Office would have someone like him speak at their hearings. Specifically, he appears to claim that there should be no public domain, that copyright should last forever, and the very idea of the public domain is anti-free market. The specific statements in Copycense's tweets:

Hoffman: We don't take houses or cars back, but we take back copyrights. Why?

Hoffman: All of this is contrary to free market capitalism

This is, of course, hogwash that anyone who actually understands either the history and intention of copyrights or basic economics would recognize makes no sense. On the reason for the public domain, there's a rather excellent book on the subject that Hoffman might want to read. But the shorthand reason should be clear to anyone who understands copyright: it was to "promote the progress of science," by which the purpose is to benefit the public by giving them access to more content. Arguing contrary to that is simply twisting copyright law away from its core purpose. Furthermore, the basic ingredients of culture and content are earlier works. If we locked up everything, we'd have a lot less content and culture, entirely contrary to the Constitutional reasons behind copyright law. That a copyright lawyer would argue otherwise, to the Copyright Office, no less, is stunning.

And don't get me started on the ridiculous suggestion that putting works into the public domain is "contrary to free market capitalism." Which sounds more like free market capitalism: a world in which there is no government monopolies and interference for people to create and build... or one in which there's a central authority granting monopolies and changing those terms at will?

I asked Copycense if he could clarify what Hoffman was saying, and if (maybe? please?) these statements were sarcastic. Copycense says he's positive they were not sarcastic, and thinks Hoffman just meant that changing the copyright terms on anyone violates the Constitution. In fact, in support of that position, Hoffman also provided this lovely nugget, apparently:

Hoffman: "I have a problem in abrogating contract rights that have been in place for 30, 40, 50 years"

He, of course, is talking about the idea of moving pre-1972 works away from their current status and over to existing federal copyright law. But... if he's so against abrogating contract rights, then, um, shouldn't he be hopping mad about all of the retroactive copyright extension out there? Shouldn't he note that the composition copyrights on all of those songs should be in the public domain? After all, the contract offered to the musicians, at the time those songs were written, was that they would be getting exclusivity on the work for 28 years, followed by another 28 years if they reregistered. In exchange for granting them this monopoly, the public would get the work at the end of that period of time. And yet... with the 1976 Copyright Act, the government totally "abrogated" the contractual rights of the public, and unilaterally extended the copyright. It's really quite incredible that one can claim, with a straight face, that lengthy copyright on old works through extension is fine, but a minor move to put certain works under copyright is somehow violating contract law.

So, it appears that he thinks copyright should last forever... and he's against changing the "contract" on copyright related terms... unless the change screws over the public and completely tramples the existing agreement they had.

Filed Under: capitalism, copyright, free markets, ivan hoffman, monopolies, public domain

RIAA Says There's No Value In The Public Domain

from the true-colors dept

While I've already written about the hearings for the Copyright Office concerning copyright on pre-1972 sound recordings, but I wanted to call out one particularly egregious and ridiculous statement from the RIAA. The RIAA's Jennifer Pariser claimed that there's no value to a work in the public domain. Apparently Pariser is unfamiliar with the works of Shakespeare. Or Beethoven. Is she serious? I mean, you could make the argument that it makes life more difficult to sell those works for the labels she represents, but those works have tremendous value. Pariser, of course, is famous for making ridiculous statements, sometimes under oath. Back when she worked for Sony-BMG she made some statements, on the stand and under oath, in the Jammie Thomas trial that were blatantly untrue. Only much later, after the jury had ruled, did the RIAA admit that Pariser "misspoke" while on the stand. One hopes she "misspoke" here as well, but I get the feeling she actually believes the blatantly incorrect statement she made.

Filed Under: copyright, cost, economics, jennifer pariser, public domain, riaa, value
Companies: riaa

The One Situation Where Record Labels Fear Federal Copyright: Old Sound Recordings

from the keep-the-public-domain-away! dept

Last year, we were among those who noted a significant problem for sound recordings from about a century ago. While under federal copyright law, works published before 1923 are in the public domain, when it comes to sound recordings, it's a different story. That's because, for quite some time, Congress did not even believe copyright law could apply to sound recordings (which is kind of funny when you realize how many in the recording industry now seem to assume that copyrights on recordings are some sort of birthright). Instead, however, various state laws covered the gap... and did so by creating copyright laws that were even more ridiculous than the federal one. Because of that, many old sound recordings may never enter the public domain, or if they do it won't be for another 50 or 60 years. And, in the meantime, many of those recordings will disappear.

This is of big concern to those who wish to preserve and share the culture from a century ago. After this issue started to get some attention, the Copyright Office agreed to look into things and just held some hearings on the issue. Copycense attended the event and shared copious tweets on the events. As an experiment, I'm going to try to collate some of the more interesting tweets, embedded below, but provide commentary here. There are a few key statements that were made that I'll address in separate posts, but this one will cover the general discussions held during the day.

What becomes clear is that there's a big divide between the legacy industry (record labels & publishers) and librarians and cultural researchers who fear that these works are dying. The people actually concerned about preserving the works are horrified at what's happening, noting that culture is disappearing -- and predominantly impacting "people of color," whose work would be freely available for all to hear if their recordings had been covered by traditional copyright, or done in any other country. Others point out that if librarians can't preserve these works, they may disappear forever.

The response from the music business guys is ridiculous -- but expected. They insist that covering these works under traditional copyright would harm artists (seriously). Rich Bengloff, the head of A2IM (mini-RIAA), insisted that covering these works under federal copyright law would "bring less investment to roots music." Huh? How does that make any sense? The RIAA also worried that there would be "costs" associated with covering these works by copyright, and that it would "raise ownership questions." This is laughable. There are already "ownership" questions, which is why we're stuck in this quagmire in the first place. The RIAA pointed out that "we have concerns that federalization would negatively affect economic value."

That, of course, is ridiculous. First, the vast majority of the works we're talking about no longer are being marketed in any way shape or form. They're disappearing. The few works that are still an issue would still have federal copyright law, which is already pretty strict. The only works that would really have a change are those from before 1923, and that's fine. It's what's good about the public domain. Thankfully, one of the representatives from library groups pointed out that work that goes into the public domain "increases value to the public," which is what copyright is supposed to be about. Furthermore, as others quite reasonably pointed out, just because something is in the public domain, it doesn't mean you can't make money off of it. Just look how many publishers make money selling public domain works.

The RIAA then tried a different tack, insisting that the libraries concerned about all this are being silly, because "according to our research," no library has been sued over this issue. Isn't that comforting? Of course, you never know when a lawsuit might be filed, and the law clearly allows one to be filed. Most libraries wouldn't take that risk. Thankfully, the brand new Registrar of Copyrights, Maria Pallante, was quick to point out that simply wishing libraries become less risk averse is not a reasonable answer here.

Hilariously, the National Music Publishers Association people (NMPA) responded to a question about how taking away 50 different state laws, and moving these works under the single, well-known, standard of federal copyright law would make things "more confusing" by claiming that it would create "uncertainty." Huh?!? On the one hand, we have 50 different, confusing and rarely tested laws. On the other, we have federal copyright law and loads of caselaw. And the NMPA is actually claiming that federal copyright law would be more confusing? Even more ridiculous is Bengloff's claim that because under those state laws most works will go into the public domain in 2067, it "makes it easy to know what we're working with." Except we also know what we're working with under federal copyright law.

Later, Bengloff claims that there's a risk because labels have "invested millions of dollars" in these works. Again, this is misleading and ridiculous. The works still covered by federal copyright would remain in the control of the copyright holders. Furthermore, someone from the Library of Congress properly pointed out that the LOC (and other libraries) have also invested millions in trying to preserve these works. A representative from libraries reminded people that the public is a stakeholder here as well (though apparently not directly represented at the hearing).

Finally, at the end of the day, the real issue makes itself known. The labels and publishers want to avoid "federalization" because they know that this would bring back "termination rights" for the musicians themselves. As you hopefully know, the labels have been vigorously fighting the fact that the musicians themselves can reclaim their own copyrights by "terminating" the copyright assignment. A decade ago, the RIAA was able to sneak a law through Congress (literally by adding a line in the middle of the night that no one noticed until after the bill passed) that turned all such recordings into "works made for hire," which removed termination rights. An outcry from artists (for once) resulted in Congress fixing that "mistake" quickly, but the labels are still infatuated with this, and are gearing up for legal fights over termination rights soon.

It appears the real issue here is that under these state laws, there are no termination rights, meaning the artists themselves can't reclaim the copyrights, and the labels and publishers get to hang onto them for a few more decades. Putting things under federal copyright law would open up an opportunity for artists to get their copyrights back. And, we can't have that.

What's really appalling here is that the label/publisher representatives still pretend to represent artists here -- and one even declares that the labels interests really are aligned with artists' interests, when the subtext of this debate shows that's not true at all.

If you want to see many of the key tweets this is based on, and are reading this via RSS or on the front page, click "read more" below to see a sampling of the key tweets.

Filed Under: copyright, public domain, sound recordings, termination

Polish Prime Minister Says Things Funded With Public Money Should Be In The Public Domain

from the wow dept

Slashdot points us to a report that Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has declared that anything funded with public money will be in the public domain (Google translation from the original Polish). It sounds like there was some hedging on this, as he perhaps suggests that they still need to classify what exactly will be public, but it's encouraging. It's also not entirely clear from the report if this just refers to state documents, or also the output of research funded by the state. Hopefully we'll get some clarification soon.

Filed Under: copyright, poland, public domain

Please Help Us Figure Out How Much The Public Has 'Lost' Due To Overprotective Anti-Copy Laws

from the using-their-methodology dept

We recently posted about an ITC report that, among other things, estimated that US companies "lost" $48 billion due to "piracy" in China. This $48 billion number generated plenty of headlines, and since the report was requested by the Senate, you can bet that it will be used politically. The problem, however, was that the methodology was ridiculous. Rather than using any sort of objective measure, the ITC went out and asked 5,000 businesses who were in "IP-intensive fields" what they thought their "losses" were, and then extrapolated out.

It should be obvious why this is ridiculous. It's asking the most biased party, who would benefit the most from government protectionism in their favor, to give totally self-reported details of the "harm" that happens without increased government protectionism, with no attempt to reality-check those results.

One of our critics in the comments responded with a fallacy, suggesting that somehow we should not be allowed to criticize the clearly specious methodology here, without offering an alternative study and results of our own. Of course, to point out that a study's methodology is wrong does not mean that you need to supply your own numbers. And, of course, we regularly point to plenty of good studies on these kinds of subjects as well.

However, an anonymous commenter made the absolutely brilliant suggestion that we should create our own study, using their methodology to calculate how much the public loses each year due to overprotective anti-copy laws. And, so we are. Just as the ITC asked those who had most thought about their "losses" from infringement, I think it's fair to suggest that the readership here includes plenty of people who have thought deeply about the public's losses from overprotection. Thus, I'm hoping we can put together a similar corpus of data from which we can extrapolate a similar number about the public's losses. You can input your own estimate of your losses here: Now, obviously, this methodology is ridiculous, but if it's good enough for the ITC and the US Senate, it seems that it must be good enough for the counter study. It seems only reasonable that those who accept the results of the ITC study must also accept the results of our study, or admit that both methodologies are simply ridiculous.

Of course, to make this work, we really would like to get as much data as possible (and we really do want you to try to answer the question as honestly as you can -- i.e., don't just make up some crazy large number, but think about it). However, please also spread this post by letting other communities of folks who likely have thought about these issues know about it, so that we can really collect enough data to make this meaningful (in as much as you can make a totally ridiculous and bogus methodology meaningful).

Filed Under: copyright, costs, culture, public domain

UK Music Publishers Issue DMCA Takedown On Public Domain Sheet Music

from the there-is-no-public-domain dept

It was just a few months ago that we noted how music publishers were annoyed at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP), which has aggregated music scores of public domain music. We noted that it occasionally received copyright threats, and now it's received another one. The UK Music Publisher's Association (note: not a specific publisher) issued a DMCA takedown over some public domain music (Rachmaninoff's The Bells), and GoDaddy (as it seems to regularly do) took down the site. Nice of them.

IMSLP and its supporters are apparently looking to see if they can file a copyrfraud lawsuit against the UK MPA for the bogus takedown. Even more bizarre is that the MPA is now trying to hide the fact that it sent the takedown in the first place, demanding that the director of IMSLP takedown the takedown notice. Amusingly, in the response to the MPA, the person from IMSLP notes that their last email was sent to the imslp.org domain... which is useless:

I note that one of the receipients of your 21/04/2011 11:23 email is feldmahler@imslp.org. Because you caused, via a bogus DMCA takedown notice, imslp.org to be removed from the internet, that email address will not work.

Of course, the punishment for filing false DMCA notices is pretty minimal, so these sorts of situations will keep happening. It's really too bad that GoDaddy took down an entire site over a single DMCA notice, but the law encourages that sort of censorship approach.

Filed Under: classical music, copyright, dmca, public domain, takedown
Companies: imslp, music publishers association

If You Thought YouTube's Copyright Lesson Was Bad...

from the wow dept

If you thought YouTube's ridiculous copyright lesson was bad, you haven't seen anything. Copyright lawyer Ray Dowd points us to this hysterically awful copyright "public service announcement" that appears to have been put together by a schoolteacher, but which gets a bunch of basic things wrong (or relies on some questionable "suggestions" about what constitutes fair use). It also appears to use a bunch of music that it almost certainly did not license. I don't think Britney Spears' reps licensed "Oops I Did It Again" to this teacher. Oh, and then there are the zombiefied children. As Dowd notes, he originally thought it was a parody, but it appears to be serious. Misguided. But serious. It includes no mention of the public domain, and even suggests you can't show more than five images, even though they're in the public domain. As Dowd explains:

The video shows children chanting that a teacher can show no more that 5 images from the artist Wassily Kandinsky in a classroom. Really weird. Even when things are in the public domain, teachers are brainwashing children that use of the images are verboten. And then using music samples in a way that is clearly NOT fair use...

Filed Under: copyright, fair use, lessons, public domain