[ANPPOM-L] extensão de copyright em gravações

[carlos palombini]

Uma biblioteca vai, naturalmente, defender seus interesses enquanto 
biblioteca. E acho, se você me permite, um tanto presunçoso avaliar "o 
quanto estão distantes de um debate mais sério" sem ter lido o documento 
ao qual o texto se refere. O que está em jogo são os interesses da EMI 
sobre os direitos de produção das gravações dos Beatles, que estão por 
expirar. A figura do pobre executante que vai ser privado de seu 
sustento por uma lei injusta é uma de retórica. Segue uma análise mais 
explícita, assinada por um economista.

+++

Lennon was right about music and the man

By John Kay

Published: April 16 2008 03:00 | Last updated: April 16 2008 03:00

Charlie McCreevy, European commissioner for the internal market, recently announced his intention "to propose to the College [of commissioners] that its term of copyright protection for European performers be increased from 50 to 95 years".

It is just possible that Mr McCreevy does not understand that copyright on recordings does not vest in performers but in producers, which are in almost all cases record companies. But we can be certain that Guy Hands, whose Terra Firma is the new private equity owner of EMI, Britain's leading record company, does. So it is no surprise that Mr Hands welcomed the Commission's proposal to extend sound recording copyright. However Mr Hands' statement applauded the plan not for its benefit to his shareholders, but on behalf of European artists.

Intellectual property is a new asset class for investors. The music created when British artists transformed popular culture in the 1960s is especially valuable. Since the revenues from extensions will flow through to the bottom line, owners of these rights find it worthwhile to devote substantial resources to lobbying for them. Since this cause is devoid of merit and receives no public sympathy, investors have retreated into the shadows and recruited well-known musicians to front the case.

That is the simple story. The detail is more complex. There are two main copyrights in popular music: copyright in the songs and copyright in the recordings. The right to the songs belongs to the composer and lasts for 70 years after his or her death. The right to the recording belongs to the producer and in Europe lasts for 50 years from the date of the recording.

Both rights can be assigned. Most Beatles compositions, for example, were transferred to a company called Northern Songs. The shares have passed through many hands, including those of businessman Robert Holmes à Court, Michael Jackson and the Sony Corporation. The sound recordings are mainly owned by - you've guessed it - EMI. Paul McCartney owns the rights to "Love Me Do" not because he composed the song or because he sang it, but because he bought them from Mr Jackson.

Performers derive their income not from copyright but from their contracts with record companies. Session musicians, like technicians, will normally simply be paid for the jobs they do, but featured artists will generally earn royalties. Normal practice is to pay an advance against royalties. In most cases, this is the only payment ever made, because the advance is not covered by the subsequent royalties.

The vast majority of recordings cease to have any commercial value within a few years and are available only in libraries. Extension of copyright buries such recordings still more deeply in dust, because they cannot be used without the permission of people who have no continuing interest in their old songs, and may indeed be dead. However, the few works that are still available after 50 years were mostly major hits and some performers, their advances repaid, may now be earning royalties. In this indirect way, a few successful artists might derive some benefit if copyright extension allowed record companies to earn higher revenues.

It is possible that Mr McCreevy is really talking about performing rights in sound records. These are a product of the scheme that shares revenues from pubs, clubs and broadcasters between publishers and artists, and they give a share of revenue to session musicians.

But the notion that extending these rights would provide pensions for ageing and impoverished crooners is an engaging fantasy. The typical annual payout is a few pounds - perhaps enough to buy a drink as musicians listen nostalgically to the recordings they performed, but whose copyright they do not own.

There is a case for proposals that might strengthen the rights of musicians against record companies, but that is definitely not the result of copyright extension. If those 1960s veterans understood better what was going on, they might echo the comments of the greatest performer of the era. As John Lennon lost control of his own compositions, he raged against the men in suits sitting on their "fat arses in the City".

---

www.johnkay.com



Alexandre Negreiros escreveu:
> Oi Carlos e todos,
>
> É que, na avassaladora maioria das legislações internacionais, as 
> proteções (para autorais e conexos) se equivalem em termos de extensão 
> de tempo. Como a União Européia impõe limites semelhantes aos seus 
> membros, e pelo visto a Finlândia possui prazos diferentes, surge esse 
> "protesto" que me parece mais sincero ali no ítem 6, quando o autor 
> reclama da dificuldade extra que os bibliotecários passarão a ter para 
> desempenhar seus papéis.
>
> Sem pretender me aprofundar, logo no primeiro ítem demonstram o quanto 
> são distantes do debate mais sério, quando diz que "não podem se 
> equiparar as proteções". Quando a comunidade internacional os assumiu, 
> em 1961 (por isso ele diz que na Finlândia não havia qualquer proteção 
> até então), através da Convenção de Roma, tutelada pela OMPI, 
> vinculada à ONU, os fez repousar sob o mesmo amparo dos direitos 
> autorais, daí são chamados de "autorais conexos", ou em inglês 
> "neigboring", ou "related" rights. E assim as legislações nacionais 
> procederam, embora sejam operados por sociedades distintas (de autores 
> e de performers) na administração de cada um deles, com exceção do 
> Brasil, é claro, onde estão todos no mesmo bloco, o que é péssimo, 
> apesar de "vendido" como grande avanço. Tenho um estudo da CISAC 
> demonstrando a diversidade de tratamentos entre direitos autorais e 
> conexos na Europa, e apesar do autoral preponderar sobre os conexos em 
> muitas e importantes nações, há muitos casos em que são distribuídos 
> mais recursos aos conexos do que aos autorais, em proporção que atinge 
> até 11 para 1, exatamente para compensar o tempo que o autoral recebeu 
> sozinho. A proporção brasileira média é de 2/3 para o autoral e 1/3 
> para o conexo, mas a lei cometeu a imprudência de delegar ao ECAD a 
> definição do fonograma, o que os permite limitar o pagamento de 
> conexos a uma fração das gravações veiculadas.
>
> As autorizações (junto aos titulares) são muito semelhantes para obras 
> intelectuais ou fonogramas, e especialmente na Europa, onde prevalecem 
> os "direitos de remuneração", e não há problemas sérios para se 
> consegui-las. O mesmo não posso dizer do Brasil. Lá, o sujeito usa, 
> faz os registros de seu uso e passa a dever (na grande maioria dos 
> usos, especialmente os de finalidade educacional). Aqui é que ele 
> teria que pedir ao bispo. O que ele alega no ítem 4, que não poderá 
> fazer sua cópia de segurança, é uma grande bobagem, uma vez que em 
> quase toda a Europa, aliás em quase todo o mundo, há regulamentado o 
> direito à cópia privada, e exatamente por isso cobra-se uma 
> determinada taxa sobre as mídias virgens, como forma de remunerar os 
> prováveis autores que serão copiados, em nome desse uso. E os 
> critérios de distribuição são bastante interessantes e, apesar das 
> reclamações, eficientes.
>
> O debate sobre o aumento da proteção é controverso, e visto com certa 
> desconfiança porque o PRAZO é parte da filosofia da proteção à 
> propriedade intelectual, surgida já em meio à preocupação com o 
> desenvolvimento da sociedade, propiciado pela circulação e difusão 
> deste mesmo conhecimento que se buscava proteger. Mas sem ele, o autor 
> não se protege e não subsiste, então o "acordo" foi alcançado a partir 
> do estabelecimento dessa limitação, que funciona para o direito 
> autoral e para as patentes, onde há um instituto ainda mais 
> controverso: o segredo industrial, quando a empresa pode abrir mão da 
> proteção do estado para tentar garantir o domínio do seu invento "para 
> sempre", ou até que alguém descubra como se faz. Poucos optam por essa 
> estratégia, por motivos óbvios, e a maior parte dos depositários 
> aceitam a proteção total por alguns anos, comprometendo-se a expor seu 
> invento quando o prazo terminar.
>
> Já me estendi, não tenho jeito... Vou ler o tal Gowers report, depois 
> eu comento.
>
> Abçs
>
> Alex
>
> On Apr 16, 2008, at 10:24 AM, carlos palombini wrote:
>>
>> 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.
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