Jamaican Government Steals Years Of Public Domain Works From Its People

from the jammin'-the-jammin' dept

Just under four years ago, Techdirt reported that Jamaica was planning something extremely foolish: a retroactive extension to its copyright term. As that article noted, when the European Union did something similar, the European Commission's own figures showed that the move would cost the EU public around one billion Euros, and it was inevitable that the Jamaican people would also lose out if the move went ahead.

The fact that we've heard nothing for four years might have nourished the hope that the Jamaican government had come to its senses, and thrown out any plans it had to short-change its own people in this way. No such luck, of course. Indeed, a depressing post from the EFF reveals that the recently-passed legislation is down there with the worst:

The copyright term in Jamaica is now 95 years from the death of the author, or 95 years from publication for government and corporate works. This makes it the third-longest copyright term in the world, after Mexico and Côte d'Ivoire respectively with 100 and 99 years from the death of the author.

But there's more:

The extension was made retroactive to January 1962. Besides being the year when Jamaica attained independence, 1962 also just so happens to have been the year when Jamaican ska music (a popular genre in its own right, but also a precursor of the even more popular reggae) burst onto the international music scene. The parallels with the extension of the U.S. copyright term in the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act" are quite eerie. But, worse than what happened into the U.S., the retrospective effect of the law means that works that have already passed into the public domain in Jamaica are now to be wrenched back out again.

Under the new copyright law, foreign users of Jamaican copyrights are not bound by the extended copyright term, and yet Jamaicans are obliged to honor foreign copyrights for the full extended term. As the EFF notes:

all that this measure has accomplished is that citizens of Jamaica, a developing country, will be paying more money into Hollywood's coffers, while Jamaica's own rich cultural heritage draws in not a penny more in return.

What's especially ridiculous here is that Jamaica's own ska and reggae success owed much to the lack of copyright protections at the time. It was that lack of copyright enforcement that allowed the music to spread and become a global phenomenon.

This law is so bad that you might hope a future Jamaican government would simply repeal it. After all, there is no rule that says copyright can only be extended, never shortened -- that it is subject to an irreversible ratchet. But imagine what would happen if this were proposed. Copyright companies and artists would be apoplectic, and doubtless start screaming that their rights and property were being being "stolen," because something they had would be taken away from them under the change.

But the same logic applies to situations where copyright is extended, and the passage of works into the public domain delayed, especially if works that are already in the public domain are actively removed from it. In this case, the public has inarguably had something taken away from it -- a right to use a huge number of works in any way without needing to obtain a license from somebody. And that, of course, is exactly what has happened in Jamaica, thanks to the introduction of this retroactive 45-year term extension. It's a perfect example of real copyright theft, not the fake kind claimed so often by fans of a greedy intellectual monopoly that always wants more.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: copyright, copyright term extension, copyright terms, jamaica

'Get Up, Stand Up' For... Whose Rights Now?

from the what-exactly-are-they-promoting dept

If you read our recent post on the US's new IP czar, Danny Marti, and his questionable ideas, you already saw much of this, but that was a (super, crazy) long post, and I just can't stop thinking about the ridiculousness of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) using the title of a popular Bob Marley song to promote World Intellectual Property Day, which was held back on April 26th. Here's the WIPO website about it: As you can see, the theme was "Get Up, Stand Up. For Music." This is a play on the title of Bob Marley and the Wailers' famous song "Get Up, Stand Up." As you may know, this song was written by Bob Marley after touring Haiti, and was first released on the Wailers' 1973 album Burnin'. That's important because a few years ago, Bob Marley's heirs sought to regain control of his copyrights from Universal Music (which got them when it bought Island Records) by going through the copyright termination process (which allows original artists to regain control over their copyrights years after assigning them to others). We've written a bunch about copyright termination in the past, though this case was a bit different -- as it was under the old termination rules, rather than those in the 1976 Act (obviously, a recording from 1973 wasn't recorded under the '76 Act).

The end result? The court claimed that Marley wrote the song as a work made for hire and thus Universal could keep the copyright, and not give it back to the Marley Estate.

So, if we're "getting up, standing up, for music," what message is WIPO really sending here? That we should support giant multinational gatekeeper corporations that play legal games to keep the copyright and control from the actual artists and their heirs? Really?

The decision is even more bizarre and ridiculous if you're even remotely familiar with things like the history of popular Jamaican music. Hell, even the history of reggae itself that led to Bob Marley becoming so famous. You had records that made their way from America that first influenced Jamaican music in the late 50s and early 60s, and without enough of it flowing into Jamaica, local record store owners started setting up their own recording studios, combining Jamaican and other Caribbean rhythms with American R&B to create entirely new kinds of music, but very much built off of American music: Jamaican shuffle, ska, rocksteady and, eventually, reggae. Some of the earliest songs were merely re-imaginings of American songs but with a Jamaican twist.

Hell, just look at Bob Marley's own first album, The Wailing Wailers, which was put out by Studio One, the leading and biggest Jamaican studio for popular Jamaican music at the time. It included a cover of the American hit "What's New Pussycat?" and, more importantly, the song "One Love" (in a very different version than the famous one you probably know -- though, frankly, I prefer this original one). However, that version included a pretty clear copy of Curtis Mayfield's amazing tune "People Get Ready," which was released the same year -- but Mayfield wasn't credited at all, to make sure there were no copyright issues.

You can find that kind of story repeated throughout the history of popular Jamaican music, and it was this kind of regular copying, building on and remixing of others' works, that helped make Jamaican music -- and Bob Marley, in particular -- so popular.

In fact, in an effort to produce more new records more quickly, it was pretty common for producers/sound system operators in Jamaica to get a bunch of studio musicians together to record a bunch of backing tracks, or "riddims" and then let a whole bunch of different singers sing different songs over them. You can find tons of classic old Jamaican songs with identical backing tracks. Here's Sound Dimension's "Real Rock" which you can probably find on dozens of reggae songs, such as Dennis Brown's "Stop that Fussing & Fighting", or Willi Williams' "Armagideon Time" (which was famously covered by the Clash a few years later).

Or, you have Jamaican bands taking American hits and writing entirely different lyrics. Ever hear the Gaylads doing "Stop Making Love"? That song sound familiar? Of course it does, it's the Four Tops' "Same Old Song".

And, of course, nearly all of this happened almost entirely in the absence of any real copyright laws. An explosion of creativity and music, that you can then take and trace a fairly straight line from Jamaican reggae to Jamaican dancehall to American hip hop and onward.

Yet, we have WIPO pointing back to all of this as an example of the need to "get up, stand up" for stronger copyright laws for music? Really?

Now, to be clear, the situation in Jamaica for musicians wasn't always great. Producers/sound system operators frequently screwed over artists. The underlying aspects of the story in The Harder They Come is only loosely fictionalized. Some musicians were screwed over, and what little bits of copyright law that were actually used, it was generally used to benefit gatekeepers over the artists -- which is how Bob Marley's heirs were left in a situation in which Universal Music fought and won in court to keep those copyrights from going back to the Marley estate.

Given all that, it's a mystery as to why anyone involved in intellectual property could possibly think that referencing Bob Marley, Jamaican music, or the song "Get Up, Stand Up" would even remotely make sense for "World Intellectual Property Day." The entire song and the history behind it is more of a condemnation of intellectual property and how it was often used to harm artists. But, of course, the geniuses at WIPO don't know much about actual culture. They just saw an opportunity to co-opt a popular concept and use it to their own advantage. That's perfectly fine of course, but it does make me wonder if WIPO gave Marley's heirs any compensation for using the title of his song? Or, does WIPO not really believe in "standing up" for that sort of thing?

Filed Under: bob marley, copyright, danny marti, get up stand up, jamaica, jamaican music, remixing, riddims, wipo

Jamaica The Latest To Embrace Retroactive Copyright Term Extension And Screw The Public Domain

from the sad-news-for-jamaican-music dept

Last month we wrote about Europe retroactively extending copyright, which, in effect, seized works that were supposed to go into the public domain. A study found that the cost to the public was 1 billion euros. To date, we have never seen a reasonable justification for retroactive copyright term extension. The purpose of copyright is to benefit the public by inspiring new works, by giving the creator a temporary monopoly. It makes no sense to retroactively change the deal, because obviously the deal was sufficient at the time the content was created. Nothing in retroactive extension increases the incentive for new works. If anything, it does the exact opposite -- it gives the record labels more incentive to keep squeezing money out of old songs, rather than to invest in new ones.

So it's disappointing to hear that Jamaica appears poised to follow suit and extend copyrights from 50 years to 70 years as well. In the video below, it starts off with an impassioned plea by a recording industry representative, who misrepresents some research. He notes a WIPO paper that says the copyright industries' return on investment is higher than other sectors. That may be true, but that is almost entirely unrelated to copyright term extension. There can be investment in the same sectors without copyright, and just because the copyright is extended, there is no reason to believe there is greater investment in those industries. The basic fallacy presented by Evon Mullings, is the idea that retroactive extension leads to greater investment. In fact, as noted, it gives the labels less incentive to invest in new works.

Unfortunately, the speaker after Mullings is the Minister of Culture, Olivia Grange, who flat out says: "You won't have to advocate. You won't have to fight for it. It is going to be done." This is especially ridiculous when it comes to Jamaican culture and Jamaican music. For many, many years, we've spoken about how Jamaican music was a great example of the success of embracing a remix culture. In addition there's been plenty of recent research talking about the explosive creativity in Jamaican culture spurred on by technology, not by copyright law... It's a shame that rather than understanding this, it appears the industry and politicians there are simply repeating myths and passing legislation that will significantly harm the public.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright extension, jamaica