1 post tagged “copyright”

Last week David Cameron asked record companies to curb 'damaging' lyrics and at the same time rejected the findings of Gowers and offered them a copyright extension.

Certainly if one is dependent on the other, it's very difficult to see how that would work.  Universal agreement to censorship across the entertainment industry?  Worldwide? Would a Prime Minister Cameron be photographed signing a historical peace accord with Xzibit? Nonsense.

In the popular imagination the Tory heartlands of middle-England are incensed that, while the tools of censorship and the economic pressures of age-classification can be imposed on movies and video games, they can't control the awful awful noise that hoodlums listen to.

So if copyright terms can be utilised as a policy tool, why not as a stick rather than a carrot?

Why not introduce legislation that can selectively reduce the legal protections of copyright legislation.  If a judge finds a particular piece of 'art' to be damaging to society, then give them the power to remove or restrict the benefits that the law provides.

This isn't strictly censorship - it's an extension of the economic pressure for self regulation that already exists, especially for the movie industry.  Bruce Willis doesn't get to properly use his Yippee-Ki-Ai catchphase in Die Hard 4.0, not because of censorship, but because of the economic pressure of age classification.

Remember, record companies are claiming that 70 years of protection are needed for recordings.  If that's to be believed, then just the likelihood of protection dropping to 5 or 10 years would presumably make investment in anti-social art-forms too risky.

Copyright isn't natural law, it's always been intended primarily as a legal tool for public policy aims.  The fact that it has always seemed in confluence with the aims of publishers doesn't mean that should always be the case.