Sunday, October 11, 2009
Musicians Starting To Assert Copyright Termination Rights Against Record Labels
Techdirt: "There's been a lot of attention recently to the news that the heirs of comic book artist Jack Kirby are alerting companies of plans to take back the copyright on various Kirby characters, using the termination rights in the Copyright Act. This followed a very long and drawn out lawsuit involving a similar attempt over Superman. The details are really complex, but copyright law allows the original creator (or heirs if that creator has passed away) certain opportunities to basically negate a deal that was signed early on to hand over the copyright on certain works. The idea was to help protect artists who signed bad deals, but in practice, it's just been a total mess."
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7 comments:
I think it's good that the artists are standing up to the record labels: For quite some time, the RIAA hasn't been acting in the interest of the artists whom it supports, but only in the interest of the executives' wallets. I find it unclear how much of an effect this will have on the RIAA, though, because it would probably take a substantial number of artists to do this to have an effect, and the process sounds hard.
The Superman rights case is really interesting; it seems that if the heirs get the rights back to the character, they'll simply put them up for sale with a better contract in which case DC has no choice but to buy them back. (It's really, really not worth it for Marvel to even bid; the cost to rework their universe to fit Superman in it is far more than the potential profit the character represents. Smaller companies probably don't have the funds to compete in such a bidding war, unless WB or a movie studio decides they want another string of Superman movies.) Then the entire process will repeat itself over 50-75 years down the road.
Seriously, copy right is ridiculous. Even with the death of Michael Jackson, the Beatles still don't half their own songs. As soon as Mickey Mouse is in danger of entering the public domain again, Disney will petition Congress to extend copyright another 25 years, just so they can have sole proprietary gain from the character.
The RIAA is a terrible, terrible organization. So many bands are taking the opportunity to publish on indie labels as soon as their contracts are up; distributing music digitally through their own control. The RIAA, hesitant enough to embrace technology, managed to screw over their artists in digital downloads. An independent artist on iTunes gets 66% of the price of an iTunes song; the RIAA gets that same 66 cents, but only .025 of a cent goes to the artist.
What astounds me the most about the copyright legislation that keeps coming up is that the same 4 companies are the ones benefiting across all media platforms. DC Comics is just another subsidiary company of Warner Bros' Entertainment, who is heavily involved through their music branch in this music copyright issues. It's great that Jack Kirby and individual musicians are speaking up on their right to owning their creative works which is why copyright law was originally created: to protect the intellectual property rights of the individual. Even if the individuals are motivated by greed to put their rights up for sale again, it will be a great opportunity to examine copyright legislation even more.
This sounds like a really horrible idea. I think there are certain circumstances that this could be a good thing, when certain rights have been abused or the original artist got screwed out of their cut, but otherwise I think the people are just looking for more money and to cause an issue. Part of getting your material out there usually means giving someone else the rights to distribute it, and turning that on its head could start pulling the threads out of the entire industry.
This completely voids the entire concept of contracts. I understand that down the road things change and artists should be able to retain their rights. But speaking as the devil's advocate, a good producer finds people who will become a success down the road and invests a lot of money into that person. When things change for the artist and they become successful the producer gets paid back for his/her trust in the first place.
The problem is that producers take too much of the money that should be going to the true creators of the art work. Perhaps a clause allowing changes and modification would be helpful.
I just feel like too many of these cases are going to be heirs who just want some money rather than any control over the artistic integrity of the copyright.
Copyright is a broken system all over. I'm in a class about piracy right now, and it's amazing how many people are working to reform or remove this system. This is merely a symptom to the disease, and cannot be addressed without looking at copyright as a whole.
All I can say is this will be a hot mess. Copyright always it. What it all boils down to is money in everyone's pockets. And everyone is only looking out for their own pockets. The idea that anyone is looking out for someone is absurd. You can't even pay someone to truly do that for you.
Although, I do have to agree, if an artist has signed away the rights, that should be the end of it until it becomes public domain.
Instead, the greed of the music industry will tie up the court system and waste tax payer money for someone else's pockets.
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