[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