Posted on 10/13/2008 6:37:54 PM PDT by Santa Fe_Conservative
President Bush on Monday signed into law an intellectual-property enforcement bill that would consolidate federal efforts to combat copyright infringement under a new White House cabinet position.
The Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act establishes within the executive branch the position of intellectual property enforcement coordinator, who will be appointed by the president.
The law also steepens penalties for intellectual-property infringement, and increases resources for the Department of Justice to coordinate for federal and state efforts against counterfeiting and piracy. The so-called Pro-IP Act passed unanimously in the Senate last month and received strong bipartisan support in the House.
The Bush administration initially expressed its opposition to the legislation, but one of its more contentious provisions, which would have allowed the Justice Department to pursue civil litigation against copyright infringers, was removed.
The RIAA voiced its support for the bill. "This bill truly is music to the ears of all those who care about strengthening American creativity and jobs," Mitch Bainwol, chairman and chief executive of the RIAA, said in a statement.
Oh brother...big brother I mean...
I wonder if the idiot even knew what he signed.
....until 4 months into the Obama presidency.
Looks like the RIAA got a good return on their investment.
Crap. This is probably riddled with loopholes for all sorts of stuff P2Pers have been fighting against for years.
It seems, whenever I ping both of you guys, it’s always bad news?...
Okay, you got me. This is another satire post, right?
And this is a bad thing because...?
LMAO!!
With the kind of crap today being passed off as “music” someone would have to put a gun to my head and make me download it.
The way the RIAA has operated is through third-party enforcers. An individual shows up at a bar, with ID, and askes to see your licensing for all the music you are playing. For example, at a friends bar, she playing CDs she had purchased legally on a stereo she had purchased legally, and ended up paying RIAA $20,000 to clear up the legal mess. The guy with the ID got 10% of the take.
Unconstitutional. Executive orders. Fair use. Utter unconstitional rubbish bought by Big Media.
And don’t expect the creators or their heirs to see a dime from this.
Yet another reason to dj from vinyl. They are too dumb to know when something is a grey market repress or licensed reissue. But computers they know.
The RIAA threw a massive party at the DNC convention in Denver. New boss will be the same as the old boss.
IF Obama DOES win, the final major act that President Bush should do is surrender the presidential claim to executive orders (it was approved in wartime and should never have lasted this long).
If nothing else, let the bastard (and yes Barack is a bastard by birth since his father was a bigamist) go without executive orders to burden us.
I just don’t like the sound of this-—
Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator
I will quit buy CDs and DVDs.
You have to pay public performance fees. That's been around a long time, long before ipods or CDs.
I have no problem with people being paid for the use of the things they create. I didn't know that was suddenly considered a non-conservative idea.
Well, the sound of it isn't important. It's what it IS which is important, and what it is is the opposite of all these socialists who think that making a work of art or entertainment--as I do--doesn't entitle you to profits from your work, but that it's "everyone's" to enjoy.
Like hell it is.
So we cannot protect against foreign invasion from Mexico by 20 million "citizens" who are encouraged to vote here and in Mexico. We cannot protect against the Mexican military escorting drug smugglers into the US. We cannot protect against terrorist threats both foreign and domestic.
But we CAN establish a new criminal investigation branch to exclusively target those making illegal copies of music, movies, games, etc.
Bread and circuses. Have to work to have money for bread and circuses.
Your copyright you file with the government has a LIMITED term to it. Just as a patent does.
There is a reason that Coca-Cola and other companies did not patent their formulas.
Don’t like the contract, don’t sign it.
But 100 year extensions on copyright are bullsh!t and unconstitutional.
The RIAA has no claim to performance fees. Perhaps the person was referring to ASCAP or BMI?
Yep, we really got our priorities right. (Wondering if Bush threw them some ‘bailout’ walkin’ around money?)
Yep, that’s the rub. None of the money will go to the actual creators.
Bush is helping the enemies of the
Republican party. why?
The bar ALREADY pays protection money to ASSSSCAP and the RIAA goons.
This is about RIAA goons going in and separately shaking down the DJ for playing “bootlegged” songs (unless you can readily prove that you purchased each of those songs from itunes,etc, or can lay your hands on the CDs. And even then they may say “not licensed for public performance” even WITH the bar’s own music license through the companies.
And since there is no tallying of which artists/songs the DJ played, the protection money paid by the DJ and the bar to ASCAP, BMI, and the RIAA will never trickle back to the artists who WERE spun that night.
The artists get ripped off.
Then again, ASCAP refused to publish rock and roll, country, and R&B in the 1940s and 1950s and then threw up claims of “payola” (which had ALWAYS existed in the industry when there only was ASCAP). But suddenly BMI was around, publishing the songs that the other agency wouldn’t.
it is about control. It is not about paying the artist. You are sorely mistaken on that point even if you do mean well.
That's because what she was doing was illegal. Since she ran a bar she probably knew that, but figured she could get away with it without paying the performance fees. She was wrong.
The sooner Bush is gone the better off we will be.
Why? The Copyright Clause grants Congress the discretion to set the length of copyrights. In a society such as ours where the creation of intellectual property is an important part of the economy, it is economically adventageous to provide longer and stronger protections.
Actually it sounds like she was playing recorded CDs and not live music, so the RIAA likely had rights to the recordings.
I’m deleting my first comment out of respect for this site and its rules concerning profanity.
Because the RIAA has proven time and time again that they fraudulently bring people to court for infringement. And because the courts see a big company doing it, they for the most part let it go thru without questioning the "evidence". The RIAA banks on intimidation to get payment from the "guilty" parties because they have an army of lawyers against a ton of little guys. Its everything that is wrong with Big Business, and I'm not shocked Bush signed this. He continues to disappoint.
Unless things have changed quite recently, the concept of "performance rights" is applicable only to music (sequence of notes) and lyrics, but to sound recordings thereof (referred to in law, regardless of actual media, as "phonorecords").
One of the reasons the band Great White was having financial difficulties prior to their fateful performance at The Station was that their one big hit was a recording of someone else's song. They were allowed to sell their own recordings of that song for whatever price they wanted, provided they paid the original songwriters $0.08 per copy, but all royalties from the performance of their recording (e.g. on the radio) went to the songwriters.
That's your way of characterizing it. If a DJ IS playing bootlegged material, that's a crime.
People in all industries have to have their materials at-hand in case of inspection. The pooooor DJ's have to keep those pesky CDs around in case The Goons come swarming in--whaaa? Why WOULDN'T they? If this is how artists are protected, why is that such a problem? If you know that's the law, it's simple to keep the material handy.
And since there is no tallying of which artists/songs the DJ played, the protection money paid by the DJ and the bar to ASCAP, BMI, and the RIAA will never trickle back to the artists who WERE spun that night. The artists get ripped off.
If this is such a concern with the poor DJs why DON'T they keep a tally? (It's called a playlist.) Answer: Because DJ's don't give a damn about the artists whose work gives the DJs a living.
Your answer seems to be "The DJs screw over the artists, so the labels have no right to protect the material THE LABELS paid for."
That's ridiculous.
Then again, ASCAP refused to publish rock and roll, country, and R&B in the 1940s and 1950s and then threw up claims of “payola” (which had ALWAYS existed in the industry when there only was ASCAP). But suddenly BMI was around, publishing the songs that the other agency wouldn’t.
I don't see the point--you seem to be bringing in a different and unrelated point. That's ancient history, and a reach--this is now. TV used to be free, so I guess we shouldn't pay for cable?
it is about control.
Of course it is.
It is not about paying the artist. You are sorely mistaken on that point even if you do mean well.
You are sorely uninformed even if you do mean ill just because most musicians are liberals.
Intellectual property isn't made "for the masses"--it's made by individuals. Individuals have the rights to their property.
If you are correct in your position, please provide the no-doubt thousands of testimonials from artists who are against this. Deadheads don't count.
When did I say otherwise?
What this has to do with protecting intellectual property NOW--in your example, DJ use of material--I have no idea. They're not playing 100 year-old records.
What would you have done with this issue?
It is given the authority to promote progress in the sciences and useful arts by establishing copyrights. How does extending the copyright of an already-written work by a deceased author promote progress?
In a society such as ours where the creation of intellectual property is an important part of the economy, it is economically adventageous to provide longer and stronger protections.
What I would like to see would be a system by which copyrights could be renewed 'indefinitely', but with a cost of renewal that would increase exponentially. An initial copyright of, say, 30 years would be free. The next ten years would require paying a renewal fee of $1,000. The next ten years after that (50 total) would cost $2,000. The next ten (60 total) $4,000. To copyright something for 100 years would require a total of $127,000. For some works, that might be worthwhile, but there would be limits as to how long it would be profitable to maintain a copyright. Extending a copyright to 200 years would cost $131,071,000. At some point, companies would have to let their properties go.
Realistically speaking, the value of a work to its creator almost always diminishes pretty quickly with time. While there are some works which have generated substantial revenue for their creators decades after their release, most works generate most of their revenue pretty quickly. If a work generates 90% of the revenue it's ever going to generate within ten years, why push copyrights over 100 years on works that aren't generating revenue? What does it accomplish?
Counting the days....enough damage has been done under “compassionate conservatism” to set back the movement another 50 years thanks to that family.
Bush the Socialist strikes again!
Plan-A is now to just download individual songs from Amazon.com, and that won’t be very many. I haven’t bought a CD in a couple of years. Let’s hope music sales continue to slide.
Maybe the RIAA will come up with a way to force people to buy music.
It is a bad thing because intellectual property law has been corrupted to the point that it retards, rather than supports, progress in the arts and sciences—the reason for which Congress was given the Constitutional authority to issue patents and copyrights. A strict constructivist reading of that authority would void most of current intellectual property law, which no longer secures to authors and inventors exclusive rights to their works for a limited term, rather secures control over the rights to the works of authors and inventors to commercial interests for a functionally indefinite term.
The fact that one can’t use Robert Frost’s 1928 poem “Fire and Ice” as lyrics to a song without paying Henry, Holt and Co. royalties on something they never created, lo these 40 years after the author’s death, is an abhomination.
I wouldn't call it an abomination, but you make excellent points. But it's odd seeing arguments against commercial interests here.
But the RIAA exists to do what individual artists--through their recording companies--can't do on their own. An artist signs over certain rights to the company; it's no wonder the companies want to protect their investment.I worked for a band that had a number of #1 and top 20 hits, and they didn't rake in what some people think they did BUT they sure weren't upset about the RIAA's actions in this particular realm. Of course the record companies are trying to protect their interests--why the heck shouldn't they? So people can get stuff for free? *I* wouldn't let that go.
You make the most sense of that side of the argument. What annoys me is how some get all high and mighty when what they REALLY are saying is 'I don't want my ability to get music for free interfered with.' When they start beating their chests about protecting artists, I just laugh.
I don’t get it. I never had any problem with paying $40.00 to buy a license to make 500 CD’s of Hank Williams Sr’s “Your Cheating Heart”. After all, I pay for milk, bread, I even pay to have my car fixed. That’s the American way. We pay for the products we use.
Is there anyone here who doesn’t want to be paid for their work? Because if there is, I have some work around my house that I would love to have you offer me your free labor to get those jobs done.
If you do expect to be paid for your work, then why shouldn’t the artist be paid for his? You wouldn’t like it too much if you didn’t get a pay check because someone thought you should just give your labors away free? Would You?
What an amusing pair.
That's because you can't make exact digital copies from the ones in the store, and you can make an exact digital copy of a car repair
why shouldn’t the artist be paid for his?
Yeah! Get ON the RIAA and the others about getting the artists their fair share. Whoops! It ain't about the artists, is it? ;-)
Thanks for adding so much to the discussion.
It's not only about the artists, it's about the whole industry and how the people in it get paid. Don't you expect a paycheck for your work? Well so do the people in the preforming arts industry.
Define Finite. You won’t live to see them honor that agreement anymore.
The law will change again in another 20 years.
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