Friday, November 06, 2009
Bluebeat Claims It Owns Beatles Copyright By Re-recording Songs; Judge Disagrees
Techdirt: "In the US, if you really want to 'protect' your copyrighted works, you have to register the works. Unlike for a patent or a trademark, it's pretty much a rubberstamp process. Every so often the Copyright Office will reject a registration, but it's rare. It does still go through them all, though. Or at least it's supposed to. However, we recently wrote about the weird case of the site Bluebeat.com selling Beatles MP3s for $0.25. We noted that nowhere on the site did the company explain how it had the rights to do so, but in its response to the lawsuit filed by EMI, it explained its bizarre logic."
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4 comments:
It's starting to look like the insanity of what is and is not patentable is starting to creep over to the copyright side of the intellectual property debates. For a while now companies have been able to patent mathematical abstractions (such as the ability to create a .gif file, or certain kinds of encryption) in order to be the only ones able to provide software to do that, when that first came about there was a huge outcry over the expansion of patent restrictions. Now it looks like copyrights are starting to become similarly stretched with Bluebeat claiming to own copyright for works that are clearly someone else's. Luckily the courts seem to be coming down on the side of the rightful owners, but who knows how long it will be before a judge rules the other way in some case?
I feel like copyright is an overly confusing topic that aims to do good by protecting someone's creation or people's intellectual property but ends up creating hurdles in distribution and ends up benefiting big companies rather than individual artists. Luckily, this judge is weighing in on the right side of this debate and I hope that in future instances the judges will be clear-headed enough to do the same. Also, I find it interesting that this isn't Bluebeat's first cross with the shady side of copyright law. Maybe they should be investigated further to make sure they comply with the law in all instances and aren't wrongfully profiting off of someone else's work.
I think copywright laws are being abused from both directions. I agree with Jennifer that they were originally in place to go good, and protect artists or creators from theft. Now they're becoming a joke. As this article shows, people have less and less respect for copyright laws. If the article is right, they're even going so far as to get into law suits simply to mock the laws.
Either way, copyrights simply aren't respected any more. On one end, you've got people downloading pirated movies and songs, and on the other, you've got overly greedy copyright holders. There's a movement with high end fashion designers right now to copyright their looks, and have all looks need to be copyrighted. This seems beyond absurd to me. If laws like this go through, there will be no way to make clothes, and not be breaking laws. All this nonsense needs to end.
I thought that it was pretty obvious when reading the article that Bluebeat's copyright claims are clearly unfounded (which is supported by the judge barring the sales of their MP3s). While it is always possible for a company like Bluebeat to make ridiculous copyright claims like this (or the DRM suit against Apple et al that was mentioned in the article), it appears as if the judicial system is doing a good job of upholding current copyright laws, which coincides with doing the right thing (in this case).
I don't think that there is an issue with the copyright office "rubber stamping" things for copyright, and I disagree with the article that patenting isn't currently a rubber stamp process (the patent office has approved some things that clearly should not be patented, implying that basically anything that is incomprehensible enough will get approved). In the case of copyright, I feel as if it should be there to protect the rights of individuals' work, which should have an easy approval process. In this case, where Bluebeat got a copyright approved, the judicial system does a fine job of invalidating the copyright claim.
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