[ANPPOM-L] extensão de copyright em gravações
carlos palombini
palombini em terra.com.br
Qua Abr 16 10:24:56 BRT 2008
A Biblioteca Nacional da Finlândia e a Associação Finlandesa de
Bibliotecas prepararam um documento contestando a extensão de copyright,
de 50 para 90 anos, "a fim de dar aos executantes a mesma proteção dos
comporitores", que está para ser levada ao Parlamento Europeu.
+++
1. The copyright protection of performers cannot be equated with
the protection of composers and other authors. Most compositions have
only one or two authors; the term of protection is counted from the
death of the longest-living author. Rights in sound recordings belong
jointly to the record company and performers participating in
recordings, sometimes more than a hundred of them. Companies do not have
a year of death. Extending the term of protection to 95 years would
inevitably lead to situations where some sound recordings would be
protected longer than the works recorded, resulting in new demands for
extended protection.
It is true that a small number of living performers will lose income
from the broadcasting of their recordings when the present term expires.
However, in Finland, record producers and performing artists did not
have any copyright protection until 1961. For a long time, the term of
protection was 25 years. This state of affairs was well known to all
parties, when recordings were made. The protection of performers and
producers has already been extended retroactively several times; no
other professional group has ever received such special treatment.
2. Commissioner McCreevy has not published any estimates of the
additional income which performers would gain from the extension.
50-year old records are only broadcast infrequently, 95-year old records
almost never. For most performers and their estates, the extra income
would only be a few euros annually, if anything. The damage caused by
the extension would be much larger than the benefits.
3. The extension of the copyright term has previously been
proposed in the EU on the basis of the competitiveness of the European
recording industry. It was claimed that European record industry would
be less competitive than the US industry, which already has 95-year
protection. In Britain, the Gowers report convincingly proved that such
claims were false. If anything, the shorter term makes European record
industry more competitive.
In the United States, there have been studies of the damage caused by
excessively long protection. In practice record companies have not been
interested in marketing recordings which are more than 50 years old,
because demand for them is marginal. Neither have they been willing to
license them to other companies. As a result, in the USA most recordings
which are more than 50 years old are available for educational and
research purposes only as European reissues. If the proposed extension
goes through, the availability of historical recordings will
dramatically decrease in Europe, too.
4. The extension of the term of protection would not only apply
to commercially published recordings. It would apply to all sound
recordings, including broadcasts, private recordings and recordings made
for research purposes. Without the permission of the rights owners,
protected recordings cannot be used for any purposes. For instance, if
an archive receives a home recording made in the 1950s, it would not be
able to make a digital preservation copy without the permission of the
rights owners, who may be unknown.
5. The extension of the term of copyright would eventually create
a huge "orphan works" problem. Ninety-year old recordings could not be
used for any purpose without the permission of the rights owners, but in
many cases it would be impossible to identify them. In the course of
time, many record companies will change owners, cease operations or go
bankrupt. Even the states where they once operated may cease to exist.
The performers die and the rights pass to second and third generations.
Because most recordings have little economic value after such a long
period, the changes will not be documented anywhere.
6. The extension of the term of copyright would endanger the
pioneering work of the Finnish National Library in making historical
recordings accessible to the public. The National Library is legally
responsible for the preservation of national cultural heritage and
providing related information services. The National Library has
digitised in the RAITA database a major part of public domain Finnish
sound recordings. The proposed extension would make this task much more
difficult. If the extension is made retroactively, most of the materials
would have to be closed for the public.
7. In the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, copyright
and access are seen as two rights of equal importance. The extension
will result in unreasonable restrictions to the freedom of information,
unless proper balances are created. The harmful consequences of the
extension to libraries and archives are well documented, while the there
are no studies of the alleged benefits. As the Gowers report noted, it
will be possible to extend the term later on, if this proves necessary,
but it will be very difficult to shorten it, if it has proven excessive.
-------------- Próxima Parte ----------
Um anexo em HTML foi limpo...
URL: <http://www.listas.unicamp.br/pipermail/anppom-l/attachments/20080416/51742381/attachment.html>
Mais detalhes sobre a lista de discussão Anppom-L