Pekka Gronow

Copyright term extension in Brussels: another chapter in the story

On January 27th, a group of MEP:s organised a hearing on the new copyright directive proposed by the EU Commission, which would extend the protection of sound recordings from the present 50 years to nearly a century. The meeting was chaired by David Hammerstein and Helga Trübel of the Green group and attended by MEP’s from the left to the right. A number of experts, including Beggy Hogge of the Open Rights Group, Martin Kretschmer of Bournemouth University, and myself, testified that the Directive is not likely to achieve the goals set by the Commission, but will instead make historical recordings less accessible in the future.

I will not repeat the arguments against the extension here – you can read this in my previous blogs, among other places. But it was interesting to note that Guenaelle Collet, the representative of the performers’ organisation AEPO ARTIS spoke strongly in favour of the extension at the meeting. She pointed out that under the present 50 year term the protection of some sound recordings will expire while (some of) the musicians performing on the records are still alive, and they will lose any income which would be coming to them if the recordings are, for instance, played on the radio.

This is a valid point and should be taken into account. Even given the fact that old records are not used that much (in Finland, for instance, only about 1 per cent of all records played on the radio are over 50 years old), some performers would theoretically gain something if the term was extended. While the 95 year term proposed by the Commission seems far too long (a performer who made a recording at the age of 20 would be 116 years old when the extended term expires), some MEP’s have already proposed amendments which would extend protection to cover the lifetime of performers. This is already the case in Greece; although no one seems to know how the Greek law functions in practice (the Commission did not bother to study this).

However, we need to know what performers can actually expect to gain from the extension if it is passed. Can we be sure that they would actually get the money? In many European countries, sound recordings were not yet protected by copyright in the 1960s, or the protection was structured differently than today, as copyright laws have been changed. Does someone really know who plays on the recordings made fifty years ago? If not, what would happen to the money?

One of the speakers at the Brussels meeting was Mike Collins, British veteran record producer and studio musician. He surprised us by telling us that no organisation in the UK has complete lists of the musicians who perform on records. The collecting societies responsible for the distribution of the money only started collecting such data quite recently. Even if a record from the 1960s is played on the radio, the musicians or their heirs have to present proof that they really played on the sessions. Easy thing to do, if you have all your diaries and receipts from 1961 still intact….

According to European Directives, the money collected for the airplay should theoretically be divided 50-50 between record companies and performers, after expenses have been deduced. How this is done in practice is left to the discretion of national collecting societies such as PPL in the UK. As Mike Collins told us, in the UK 16 % of the income is collected on account of American musicians whose records are played on the radio. But since the USA makes no such equitable remuneration payments to performers, American or otherwise, for radio plays or other public performances of sound recordings, PPL generously passes this sum on to record companies. British musicians are now left with about 30 pence of each pound received. At least 65 % of this goes to the featured performer or performers, whose names are on the label. The remaining pennies are split among all the session musicians. If there is a 20-man string section, you can count for yourself how much each man receives.

The same questions can also be made about the session musicians’ fund. The Commission has proposed that record companies would be required to set aside 20 % of the revenue from the sale of records which benefit from the extended term. Money from the fund would be paid to the session musicians who played on the records. Who will receive the money if the names of the musicians are not registered anywhere?

I have been wondering why the EU Commission did not wish to publish in its impact assessment any factual calculations of the extra income which would be coming to individual musicians in various member states during the next ten-year period, if the extension is passed. Now I am beginning to understand this. The figures would not tolerate light.

Viisi esseetä tekijänoikeudesta

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Ville Oksasen tuoretta väitöskirjaa ”Five Essays on Copyright in the Digital era” voi aidosti suositelle kaikille, joita tekijänoikeus kiinnostaa. Yleensä suomalaisessa tekijänoikeustutkimuksessa on ollut kysymys voimassa olevan lain selittämisestä. Oksanen pohtii koko lain tulevaisuutta, skeptisesti. Hänen lähtökohtanaan on Nicholas Negroponten vuonna 1995 esittämä kuuluisa väite, jonka mukaan tekijänoikeus on täysin vanhentunut. Negroponten mielestä tekijänoikeusjärjestelmän täytyy ensin romahtaa kokonaan, ennen kuin se voidaan rakentaa uudelleen.

Tietotekniikan viimeaikainen kehitys näyttäisi jossakin määrin tukevan tätä väitettä. Tekijänoikeudellisesti suojatun aineiston, kuten elokuvien, musiikin ja pelien luvaton jakelu verkossa on saavuttanut melkoiset mittasuhteet. Mielenkiintoista on, ettei kyse pääsääntöisesti ole varsinaisesta piratismista, jossa joku kävisi kauppaa tällaisilla tuotteilla. Pikemminkin kysymys on eräänlaisesta vastarintaliikkeestä, epävirallisesta yhteisöstä, jonka ”jäsenet” vaihtavat aineistoa tavalla, joka mahdollisesti ylittää voimassaolevan lain sallimat rajat.

Oikeudenomistajat ovat pyrkineet rajoittamaan tällaista toimintaa kampanjoilla ja laajaa julkisuutta saaneilla oikeudenkäynneillä, joissa yksittäisiä lainrikkojia on tuomittu sakkoihin ja korvauksiin. Artikkelissa ”Can lawsuits control file sharing on the internet” Oksanen suhtautuu kuitenkin epäilevästi oikeudenkäyntien vaikutukseen. Tutkimukset ovat osoittaneet, että suuret oikeudenkäynnit ovat vähentäneet tiedostojen jakelua vain väliaikaisesti. Sen sijaan ne ovat johtaneet siihen, että tiedostojen vaihtajat ovat siirtyneet käyttämään yhä vaikeammin jäljitettävää tekniikkaa eli kaivautuneet syvemmälle maan alle.

Ensi silmäyksellä tekniset kopioinninestojärjestelmät (DRM, Digital Rights Management) näyttäisivät tuottajien näkökulmasta olevan ratkaisu tähän. Aineisto varustetaan digitaalisella ”lukolla”, joka estää sen käyttämisen luvattomiin tarkoituksiin. Käytännössä kysymys on kaikkea muuta kuin yksinkertainen. Täysin ”murronkestävää” kopioinninestojärjestelmää ei ole olemassa, ja useimmiten aineisto päätyy kuitenkin ei-auktorisoituun jakeluun. Sen sijaan DRM-järjestelmät estävät pahimmassa tapauksessa ostajaa käyttämästä hankkimaansa aineistoa tavoilla, jotka olisivat täysin laillisia – esimerkiksi tekemästä siitä kopioita yksityiseen käyttöön. Lisäksi DRM-järjestelmiä käytetään mielellään kilpailun rajoittamiseen, aineiston käyttöä varten on hankittava tietynmerkkinen laite.

Kaksi väitöskirjan artikkelia käsittelee juuri DRM-järjestelmiin liittyviä kysymyksiä. Ensimmäinen tarkastelee DRM-järjestelmiä vastaan syntyneitä kansainvälisiä liikkeitä, toinen DRM-järjestelmien yhteensopivuutta. Oksasen ja kirjoittajakumppanin Mikko Välimäen johtopäätös onkin, että DRM ei pelasta tekijänoikeutta.

Mitä sitten jää vaihtoehdoksi? Väitöskirjan neljäs artikkeli käsittelee tilannetta, jossa tekijänoikeudesta on tietoisesti ja vapaaehtoisesti luovuttu. Tietokonealalla ilmaisohjelmista on tullut pysyvä ja tärkeä osa teollisuutta. Voisi melkein sanoa, että niiden kohdalla on palattu aikaan ennen tekijänoikeutta, jolloin kansanperinne syntyi ja kehittyi vapaan muuntelun ja kollektiivisen luomistyön pohjalta. Tämä on rajusti yksinkertaistettu kuvaus kansanperinteen luonteesta, mutta kalevalaisia runoja ei koskaan olisi syntynyt, jos jokainen runonlaulaja olisi joutunut hankkimaan edelliseltä laulajalta luvan aineiston ”uudelleensovittamiseen”. Artikkelissa käsitellään mm uudentyyppisiä oikeudellisia järjestelyjä (esimerkiksi GNU-lisenssit), joiden avulla on pyritty turvaamaan se, ettei kukaan käytä ilmaisohjelmia yksityisiin kaupallisiin tarkoituksiin.

Tietokonealalla ilmaisohjelmat ovat osa laajempaa kokonaisuutta ja sen ansaintalogiikkaa: ne ovat mukana luomassa tulovirtaa, josta ohjelmien tekijätkin hyötyvät. Mistä musiikin ja elokuvien tekijät saavat leipänsä, jos kaikki aineisto on verkossa saatavissa ilmaiseksi?

Samalla lailla voidaan kysyä, mistä tekijät saavat leipänsä, jos musiikkia on radiosta kuultavissa ilmaiseksi. Tähän on tunnetusti löydetty ratkaisu jo 1920-luvulla, sen nimi on sopimuslisenssi. Suomessa järjestelmää hoitavat Teoston ja Gramexin tapaiset järjestöt. Miksi internetille ei ole kehitetty vastaavanlaista järjestelmää? Väitöskirjan viidennessä artikkelissa Oksanen ja Välimäki ryhtyvätkin rohkeasti spekuloimaan vaihtoehdolla, jossa laajakaistan käyttäjiltä kerättäisiin niin paljon rahaa, että levymyynti voisi loppua kokonaan, mutta tekijöiden tulot eivät pienentyisi lainkaan.

Artikkeli on eräiden yksityiskohtien osalta epätarkka, mutta kokonaiskuva on vakuuttava: tällainen järjestelmä olisi periaatteessa mahdollinen, ja ehkä jopa tekijöiden kannalta oikeudenmukainen, vaikeuksista vapaalla tasolla. Kirjoittajat itse kuitenkin huomauttavat, ettei se ole kovin todennäköinen. Ensinnäkin tallennuslaitteiden nopea kehitys johtaisi siihen, että rahan keräämiseksi täytyisi säätää jonkinlainen tv-luvan kaltainen ”tekijänoikeusvero” kaikille, myös niille jotka eivät suojattua aineistoa käytä. Todennäköisemmin se kaatuisi kuitenkin oikeudenomistajatahojen vastustukseen, nämä kun pitävät mieluummin kiinni ”tekijän yksinoikeuden” periaatteesta.

Yhteenvedossaan Oksanen näyttäisi pääosin Negroponten teesiin: sen enempää tekniset järjestelmät kuin lakien tiukempi valvontakaan eivät pysty pelastamaan tekijänoikeutta sen nykyisessä muodossa, tarvitaan uudenlainen järjestelmä, jonka kansalaiset hyväksyvät.

Kokonaisuutena väitöskirja on mielenkiintoinen ja poleeminen katsaus tekijänoikeuden ajankohtaisiin kysymyksiin, sitä voi suositella myös niille lukijoille, joita oikeustiede ei kiinnosta. Paikoitellen lukija kuitenkin toivoo, että väitteitä olisi problematisoitu enemmän. Entä sellainen teosten käyttö, joka ei lainkaan perustu digitaalitekniikkaan? Yksityiset kuluttajat voivat ehkä haastaa sekä tekijänopikeudet että nopeusrajoitukset, mutta yritykset eivät. Entä jos oikeuksien väitetty "mureneminen" onkin vain marginaalista, ja ydinbisnes toimiikin yhä mainiosti, myös digitaalisella ajalla?

Copyright in the European Union: Collecting Societies

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For some time now, I have written on developments in copyright law in the European Union. My main concern has been the proposal to extend the term of neighbouring rights to nearly a hundred years. In a recent blog, I discussed the problems which musicians have in getting paid for the airplay of their records in other EU countries.

The EU Commission has recently announced a decision which targets on the operations of collecting societies representing composers and publishers, such as Teosto in Finland, GEMA in Germany and PRS in Britain. The Commission prohibits the societies from dividing certain activities on a territorial basis.

Collecting societies are organisations which manage the performance and mechanisation rights of composers and music publishers. If you want to organise a concert, the collecting society in your country will issue a license which permits you to perform any copyrighted music for a set fee. Through mutual agreements, national collecting societies represent all other collecting societies in the world, so the Finnish society can also grant licenses for the performance of British music, and vice versa. It is a highly effective one-stop system which has functioned well for more than a century, despite occasional squabbles about the rates and certain administrative practices.

The problem is that the system does not work well in today’s networked word. If you want to start a digital music service with customers all over Europe, you need a licence from all European collecting societies. This is clearly against the spirit of the European Union, and new solutions are needed. The Commission wants to solve the problem by demanding that all collecting societies have to license their repertoire on an EU-wide basis, and claims that this would benefit both composers and the users of music. The decision is limited to digital services and does not apply to live performances or broadcasting.

This sounds fair enough, but collecting societies are not happy with the decision. CISAC, the international organisation of collecting societies writes that “the decision’s approach to territoriality will inevitably lead to a catastrophic fragmentation of repertoire and therefore legal uncertainty to music users.”

What is the problem here? Why cannot collecting societies simply let each other license their total repertoires to users? After all, in the end, the money would flow into the original composers and publishers.

The problem is that collecting societies do not “own” the compositions they represent. They can only assign users rights which they have obtained from the original right owners – composers and publishers. A major part of the most frequently performed songs in Europe are controlled by four large music publishers which are closely connected with multinational record companies. As things stand now, each publisher has made agreements with different collecting societies. If you want to start a European music service today, instead of going to all national collecting societies, you have to go to four large collecting societies with contracts with different publishers, and you still do not have the rights to the total European repertoire.

There is another interesting viewpoint in the statement issued by the Finnish collecting society Teosto. The organisation asserts that it cannot release its entire Finnish repertoire to other societies until it is convinced that it will be properly administered. Teosto fears that certain collecting societies would not be able to survey and report the traffic in music with sufficient detail, and this would harm composers from smaller countries such as Finland.

I have a long experience from the user side in dealing with collecting societies, and I am convinced that they are remarkably effective in administering the rights of their Finnish members. But as Teosto already has reciprocal agreements with all other European collecting societies, the statement seems to imply that all of them are not equally diligent.

This may be true, but the fact is that there is little published research on the actual functioning of collecting societies. As far as I know, the EU Commission has not published any assessment of the potential impact of its decision. I would not be surprised if we find that, in the long run, the decision will benefit the four large publishers and harm the users who want to get access to a broad repertoire of European music. We simply do not know, and I suspect that the Commission does not know, either.

Commission Proposal on a Directive for Term Extension. Two days in Brussels

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The European Parliament has now started debating the Commission’s proposal to extend the protection of sound recordings from 50 to 95 years. I was one of the few outsiders who attended the first hearing on November 9th at JURI, the Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee, at the invitation of the UK-based Open Rights Group.

The EU Commission has claimed that the extension will benefit recording artist and companies, without any cost to consumers and users of recordings, such as broadcasters. Critics have pointed out that the proposal is unlikely to achieve any of these aims. Not surprisingly, opinions at the hearing were divided. John Kennedy, chairman of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry expressed his full support to the proposal, while Lionel Bently, professor of copyright law at Cambridge led the critics. The Commission was represented by Tilman Leuder, head of the copyright unit, who naturally spoke for the extension.

What was interesting about the debate was the degree of heat which it generated. The criticism has already shown that there are gaps in the Commission’s assessment of the effects of the directive. In the final analysis, the optimal duration of copyright protection is a political decision. One can find justifications for a ten year term of protection, or two hundred years. However, Leuder insisted on finding new excuses for the extension. According to him, the Commission has an obligation to extend the term, because Greece already has a longer term than the rest of the EU.

This is interesting, because the special features of Greek copyright law were already noted in 1993, when the Union’s copyright laws were first harmonised, and Greece was granted an exception. Saying that the EU has to follow Greece is a bit like saying that all European countries have to legalise snuff, because Sweden has an exception to allow this unhealthy practice, which is deeply rooted in Swedish folk tradition. Moreover, there is no mention of the Greek case in the Directive and the impact assessment.

Greek copyright law differs from all other European countries in the sense that musicians are protected for 50 years or lifetime, whichever is longer, while record producers only have the standard 50 years. This means that after 50 years, the rights in sound recordings automatically pass to any surviving musicians. I have not been able to find out how this functions in practice, but it is an interesting idea, and the new Directive proposed by the Commission will in fact weaken the position of Greek musicians vis-à-vis record producers. It will be interesting to see how the Greek government will handle this, if the Directive is passed.

Leuder also insisted that there is no proof that the price of public domain recordings (recordings whose copyright has expired) will be any lower than protected recordings, refuting evidence presented by Bently. Of course it is true that there is not much evidence either way, because all the “research” on this topic has been based on very small samples, but my own experience points in the other way. There was no mention of large-scale digital archives, such as The European Library, where public domain content would be available free.

The discussion of the Directive will now continue in four committees: Legal Affairs, Culture, Internal Market, and Industry. Talks with several MEP’s revealed that many are dissatisfied with the Commission’s proposal, and in particular the 95-year term was felt to be excessive. On the other hand, there have also been moves in the other direction, and MEP Christopher Heaton-Harris has already filed an amendment which would in practice abolish the take it or leave it-clause. Heaton-Harris also suggests that the 20 % share promised to musicians in certain cases should be calculated from net rather than gross revenue.

The deadline for amendments is 20th November, and the Legal Affairs Committee will vote on the directive on January 19th. So if you have any personal viewpoints on the Directive, now is the time to contact your own MEP in Brussels.

For the full story of the Copyright Directive, you can read my earlier blog at
http://blogit.yle.fi/node/2230

Pekka Gronow is sound archivist and adjunct professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Helsinki. He is the author of numerous books and articles on the recording industry, including “An International History of the Recording Industry” (2000).

Suomalaisille lukijoille: tämä ja seuraavat blogikirjoitukset on poikkeuksellisesti julkaistu englanniksi aiheen kansainvälisen merkityksen vuoksi.

Taiteilijat pidentäisivät äänitteiden tekijänoikeusaikaa

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Yli kuusisataa suomalaista muusikkoa, solistia ja kapellimestaria on allekirjoittanut vetoomuksen, jossa vaaditaan äänitteiden tekijänoikeussuoja-ajan pidentämistä. Taiteilijat haluavat, että äänitteiden tekijänoikeuden suoja-aikaa pidennettäisiin EU-komission esittämällä tavalla viidestäkymmenestä vuodesta 95 vuoteen. Vetoomuksesta julkaistiin maanantaina kokosivun ilmoitus suurimmissa päivälehdissä.

Ilmoitus on ajankohtainen, sillä Euroopan parlamentin lakivaliokunta ryhtyy käsittelemään asiaa tiistaina 4.11. Asia on herättänyt julkisuudessa paljon huomiota. Suuri osa Euroopan tekijänoikeusjuristeista on arvostellut EU-komission esitystä. Asiantuntijoiden mielestä komission esitys on lakiteknisesti huono ja sen perustelut ovat hatarat.

Äänilevyjen tekijänoikeussuoja on nykyisin 50 vuotta julkaisuvuodesta. Tämä merkitsee siitä, että joissakin harvoissa tapauksissa suoja päättyy jo taiteilijan elinaikana. Kuka tahansa voi sen jälkeen ryhtyä myymään äänitteitä ja pitää itse rahat. Allekirjoittajien mukaan se on väärin. He vaativat, että Suomen hallituksen pitää tekijänoikeuskysymyksessä puolustaa pitkän elämäntyön tehneitä taiteilijoita tukemalla EU:n direktiiviehdotusta.

Mitä tämä tarkoittaa käytännössä? Olen ollut koko ikäni kiinnostunut vanhoista äänilevyistä, mutta valitettavan harvat jakavat harrastukseni. Asia on helppo varmistaa kävelemällä lähimpään Anttilaan katsomaan, mitä levyjä on tarjolla. Yli 50 vuotta vanhoja äänitteitä ei tarjolla ole monta, yli 90-vuotiaita ei ainoatakaan. Sitä paitsi suurin osa levyillä soittavista muusikoista on aikanaan sopinut levytuottajien kanssa Suomen Muusikkojen Liiton työehtosopimuksen mukaisesta tuntikorvauksesta – he eivät olisi saaneet penniäkään, vaikka suoja-aika olisi pitempi.

Myös rivimuusikoille kertyy tuloja, jos levyjä soitetaan radiossa. Viime vuonna noin yksi prosentti kaikista Suomen radioasemille soitetuista levyistä oli yli 50 vuotta vanhoja. Jos suoja-aika olisi ollut pitempi, korvaukset olisivat nousseet muutaman kymmenen tuhatta Euroa. Tästä puolet olisi mennyt tuottajille, siis levy-yhtiöille, toinen puoli muusikoille. Muusikoiden osuudesta vajaa puolet olisi mennyt ulkomaille. Suomalaisten muusikoiden jaettavaksi kertyisi suoja-ajan pidentämisestä vuosittain ehkä kymppitonni, joka jaettaisiin satojen muusikoiden kesken.

- Monelle meistä eläketurva on jäänyt tai jäämässä olemattomaksi ja taiteilijaeläkkeitä riittää ani harvoille, kirjoitetaan taitelijoiden ilmoituksessa.

Jokainen voi laskea, miten paljon muusikot käytännössä hyötyisivät suoja-ajan pidennyksestä. Jos lehti-ilmoituksiin ja lobbaukseen käytetty raha olisi ohjattu suoraan gramex-korvauksiin, muusikoille olisi ollut tästä suurempi ilo. Suoja-ajan pidentäminen on yhteiskunnan näkökulmasta kohtuuttoman kallis tapa tukea kulttuuria, sillä tekijänoikeus ei ole vain oikeus korvaukseen. Se on myös yksinomainen oikeus päättää tuotteen käytöstä. Äänilevyissä tämä oikeus kuuluu levy-yhtiölle, ei muusikoille. Käytännössä se ilmenee niin, että suurin osa 5 – 50 vuotta vanhoista levyistä ei ole lainkaan saatavissa, vaikka muusikot tätä haluaisivat. EU:n komission ehdottama uusi direktiivi ei muuttaisi tilannetta mitenkään. Direktiiviin ehdotetut lisäpykälät, joiden tavoitteena on parantaa äänitteiden saatavuutta, ovat lakiteknisesti niin kehnosti muotoiltuja, että niiden vaikutus jäisi olemattomaksi.

Muusikkojen aseman parantamiseksi löytyisi monia muitakin keinoja, joita kannatan lämpimästi. EU:n komissio voisi ensin huolehtia esimerkiksi siitä, että suomalaiset muusikot todella saavat korvaukset kotiin, jos heidän levyjään soitetaan ulkomaisilla radioasemilla. Taiteilijaeläkkeitäkin pitäisi korottaa.

Commission Proposal on a Directive for Term Extension. Some further reflections.

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I have recently commented on the proposal of the EU Commission to extend the protection of sound recordings by another 45 years. Originally I had planned to stop here, but copyright is such a fascinating subject that I decided to add some additional comments on recent developments.

In 2006, a British company called Rights Agency Limited (RAL) challenged Gramex, the Finnish collecting society representing musicians and record companies in a Finnish court. RAL represents a small number of best selling recording artist including Paul McCartney and Elton John (a full list was never disclosed). According to Finnish copyright law, Gramex is the only agency entitled to collect royalties from broadcasters on behalf of recording artists. RAL demanded that in the future, royalties collected by Gramex on behalf of RLA’s clients should be paid through this agency. Gramex retaliated by demanding that these performers should either join Gramex or receive their royalties through PPL, the British collecting society which has a reciprocal arrangement with Gramex. According to Gramex, there was no reason why the payments should go through RAL.

It is easy to find merit in the arguments of both parties. Composers, musicians and record companies today receive a large part of their income from performance royalties. The money is traditionally collected by organisations known as collecting societies. In this way, broadcasters, concert organisers, discos, bars, department stores and anyone else can easily obtain a blanket license to use all types of music in their activities. Rights owners in turn are saved the trouble of negotiating with thousands of users individually.

Collecting societies are organised on a national basis, but they cooperate across the borders. If you are a British composer and your music is broadcast in Finland, the money is collected by the Finnish composers’ collecting society Teosto, which remits it to PRS in the UK, which in turn adds it to your annual cheque. The system has worked well for decades.

If you are a performing artist, things are not quite so simple. The system works well enough on a national basis, but there are considerable differences in the way collecting societies function. In Scandinavia, the collecting societies use actual playlists obtained from broadcasters as the basis for their payments. All musicians performing on the recordings, featured artists and sidemen, receive their share. In Germany, broadcast royalties have been paid on the basis of record sales. In the UK, as far as I know, sidemen previously did not receive anything. There are no published studies of such practices; in many cases they are considered trade secrets.

Although all EU member states have similar copyright laws, collecting societies representing performers and record companies do not cooperate fully. If you are a Finnish artist and your record is broadcast in France, there is no way you can actually collect. The system works between the Scandinavian societies and a few other partners, but if your record is played in Germany, you have to contact the German society GVL directly.

There are historical reasons for this state of affairs. All collecting societies have a residue of unclaimed money, because the rights owners cannot be properly identified or other similar reasons. This money is then divided between the society’s domestic customers, who have a vested interested in keeping things this way, but it is easy to understand by a Paul McCartney or Elton John, whose records will be broadcast in all EU member states, would want to hire an agent to look after his royalties.

But if Elton gets paid directly, what about the bass player on his records? The Finnish collecting society may not even know his name and bank account number, because only the record company and the British collecting society have this information. The number of accompanying musicians playing on a record might even affect the share which is due to Elton, because the money collected for the plays of an individual track will be shared by all participating musicians. If every musician uses a different agency, things will really get complicated. It is clear that there is no easy solution to this question.

In November 2007, Rights Agency withdrew its claim from the Helsinki court. Obviously the parties had reached an agreement, but Gramex has declined to comment on this in public. Copyright is not simple.

Additional comments can be found in my previous blogs

http://blogit.yle.fi/node/2230
http://blogit.yle.fi/node/2234
http://blogit.yle.fi/node/2240
http://blogit.yle.fi/node/2242
http://blogit.yle.fi/node/2251

Pekka Gronow is sound archivist and adjunct professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Helsinki. He is the author of numerous books and articles on the recording industry, including “An International History of the Recording Industry” (2000).

Commission Proposal on a Directive for Term Extension. Co-authors.

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The EU Commission has recently proposed a change in European copyright law. The main effects would be on sound recordings; I have already commented on this. However, there is an additional provision on the protection of musical works which have several authors: “The term of protection of a musical composition with words shall expire 70 years after the death of the last of the following persons to survive, whether or not these persons are regarded as co-authors: the author of the lyrics and the composer of the music”.

As a rule, copyright in “artistic and literary works” last 70 years from the death of the author. But how about works with two authors? How do we count the term? The EU Commission mentions the opera “Pelléas et Mélisande” as an example. The composer, Claude Debussy, died in 1919. Maurice Maeterlinck, on whose play the opera was based, died in 1946. When does the copyright of this opera expire? In some countries, the words and music would be protected separately, in others, the opera would be considered a co-written work.

In real life, this question has little significance. If the libretto of an opera is protected but the music is not, or vice versa, you still cannot put it on stage without the permission of the publisher. If you want to record it, you will not get a 50 % discount of the copyright fee. However, different interpretations of the law could influence the way this money is divided. It could also make a difference if you only want to use the text or the music separately – say, make an instrumental recording of the music from the opera.

The Commission notes that “music is overwhelmingly co-written (…) the creative process is often collaborative in nature”. Most countries already recognise this. Under Finnish law, works of joint authorship are protected until 70 years from the death of the last surviving author. However, “Pelléas et Mélisande” was definitively not co-written. The play was first published in 1892 and performed at the Théatre des Bouffes-Parisiens in the following year, when Debussy saw it. After obtaining Maeterlinck’s permission, Debussy started working on the opera, and it was presented at the Opéra-Comique in 1902. During the compositional process, Debussy made many cuts and changes in Maeterlinck’s text, with no further input from the playwright. Under Finnish law, the opera would not be considered a “work of joint authorship”.

Is this a problem which needs to be solved? Where is the beef? The EU Commission is not able to give any examples. A recent study commissioned by EU from the Dutch Instituut voor Infomatierecht concluded that there are no good reasons to change the existing law.

It would be more correct to state that some musical works are co-written, while in other cases the words and music are independent of each other. Hundreds of composers have set the poems of Goethe, Schiller and Heine to music. Dozens of lyrics have been written to the finale of Beethoven’s 9th symphony. What happens if I, too, set ”Heidenröslein” to music? As the law stands now, my modest contribution would be protected, and if the song is performed in public, I would receive appropriate remuneration. But if the new rule is accepted, Goethe’s rights would presumably also be born again, as the text would become copyrighted. Who gets Goethe’s share? Would I be able to use the text if there already is another recent song based on the same poem – Schubert, of course, is in public domain?

As I said, in real life the proposed change does not make much difference. I presume the European collecting societies have already figured out how to handle the money generated by “Pelléas et Mélisande” under the old law and the proposed new directive. I asked the Finnish composer’s collecting society Teosto, but they were not able to tell me how this would affect their work. I suppose someone will be found to pocket Clause Debussy’s money. But the proposal does illustrate one thing about EU’s copyright policy: the rights owners want to get more mileage out of their property, the changes are always in one direction only. And the new rule is just as vague as the old one.

Additional comments can be found in my previous blogs

http://blogit.yle.fi/node/2230
http://blogit.yle.fi/node/2234
http://blogit.yle.fi/node/2240
http://blogit.yle.fi/node/2242
http://blogit.yle.fi/node/2251

Commission Proposal on a Directive for Term Extension. Digital Libraries.

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For about ten years now, it has been technically possible to create large-scale digital collections of archival materials which are freely accessible on the web. One of the best known is “Project Gutenberg”, which digitises books. On a national scale, there is the Finnish Historical Newspaper Library, which contains the entire content of all newspapers published in Finland up to 1890, over 900,000 pages of text.

Old newspapers are printed on paper which has become so fragile that libraries normally do not allow their customers to handle them at all. Anyone who has ever attempted to struggle through microfilms to find information from old newspapers knows that it is a difficult and time-consuming task. Having all this accessible on your own computer screen can be a revelation. It lets you work in your own home, according to your old schedule (no opening hours), and broadens immensely the scope of documents you can study.

Large-scale digital collections of sound recordings are still uncommon, but they are growing rapidly. One of the best-known is the Cylinder Preservation and Digitisation Project of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Phonograph cylinders were made from the 1880s to the 1910s, and very few institutions today have the necessary equipment to play them. I have been told that the Santa Barbara cylinder site has been an immense success; it has attracted thousands of listeners who get a unique view of musical life a hundred years ago – something they couold not get elsewhere.

A related project is the Virtual Gramophone project of the Canadian National Library, which offers a large selection of historical Canadian recordings to the public.

So far digital audio collections have focused on early, almost prehistoric material, but the technology is so new that many projects are still at the planning stage. The AHRC Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music in the UK, for instance, is hoping to make its huge collection of classical recordings available for researchers. Many digital library projects have an audio component. Because these projects are non commercial, they take a longer time to mature, but they will be coming - if the law will allow it.

Why is excessively long copyright protection harmful to society? The digital library projects vividly illustrate the problem.

Copyright is a “mini-monopoly” like a patent: it gives the author and his publisher an exclusive right to control (most) uses of a work for a limited period of time. Copyright has been considered necessary because it is believed to encourage creativity.

The other side of copyright is “public domain”. Works which are no longer protected by copyright are in the public domain. Public domain works include most traditional culture, the Bible, the plays of Shakespeare, the compositions of Beethoven, the recordings of Caruso, historical newspapers, and so on. Public domain works can be freely used, like inventions which are no longer patented; they are the soil which nurtures new creation.

When copyright lasts too long, it will no longer encourage creation. On the contrary, it prevents present creators from learning from the work of their predecessors. It has been argued that income from established works gives publishers the resources necessary for new investment, but for every old work which still is commercially valuable there are thousands which are not. These works are also protected; they cannot be used for anything – illustration, education, material for new works - without the permission of the rights owners. Often the rights owners, grandchildren of the creators, can no longer be traced with reasonable effort. Publishers have gone out of business, documents lost, and so on.

We are now entering an era when technology would permit us to make large parts of our cultural heritage available on the net. The Commission’s proposal would still keep older recordings (probably up to 1959) permanently in the public domain, so it will take a while for the world’s archivists to put this material on the net. In many cases the recorded works are still protected, but their terms will also run out one day, and there are already numerous recordings of classical and traditional music which are totally free.

The effects of the proposal will only become obvious in a decade or so. Many recordings made in the 1960s will still be protected, because record companies have at some time reissued them or sold them on the internet. Other records will now be in the public domain. No one will know which is which, because there is no requirement to register these actions. The expansion of digital libraries will come to a halt.

The EU Commission is selling our future.

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Additional comments can be found in my previous blogs

http://blogit.yle.fi/node/2230
http://blogit.yle.fi/node/2234
http://blogit.yle.fi/node/2240
http://blogit.yle.fi/node/2242

My next blog will focus on the rights of co-authors

Commission Proposal on a Directive for Term Extension. Reissues and the “use-it-or-lose-it” provision

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The EU Commission has recently proposed an extension of the copyright protection of sound recordings from 50 to 95 years. The complete documents can be found at

http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/copyright/term-protection/term-protection_en.htm

I have commented on the proposal at some length in my previous blogs. The Commission claims that in addition to other beneficial effects, the proposal would encourage record companies to reissue a larger part of their back catalogues, which today are largely inaccessible: “a term extension provides record companies with an incentive to digitise and market their back catalogue of old recordings”.

So far the evidence has been exactly the opposite. As it happens, we already have a “controlled experiment” on the effects of the 95-year terms. The United States has for some time protected all sound recordings for 95 years (the model for the EU proposal). This has not encouraged new creation or the reissue of historical recordings: a study commissioned by the Library of Congress and the Council on Library and Information Resources in 2005 showed that historical recordings have practically disappeared from the American market, as their owners do not see any commercial potential in them. (It is significant that there is no reference to this well-known document in the material supplied by the EU). Today, historical American recordings are mainly available as reissues from small European specialist companies. The proposed directive would effectively close this source.

The background material provided by the Commission shows a total lack of understanding of the reissue market. The only source of information which the Commission has used seems to be a piece of marketing research which shows that most reissues of “public domain” recordings cost the same as other recordings in London record shops. It is not the cost which is important, it is access.

One should distinguish between copyright in recordings and copyright in musical works. As the Commission notes, a record which is more than 50 years old is not fully in public domain if it contains musical works which are still protected. However, the Commission fails to mention that the so-called mechanical rights of musical compositions are administered by collecting societies, and normally anyone can (re)issue a recording of any composition against a standard fee. If you want to reissue the complete recordings of Enrico Caruso or the first recordings of Elvis Presley, you only need to pay a standard fee for the mechanical rights of any protected compositions. (In Caruso’s case, most of the recorded compositions are also in the public domain).

The opposite is not true: if a recorded work is out of copyright, but the record is protected, it is often impossible to get a licence from the record company to reissue it, or to include it on a website, even if the company itself is not using it.

The market for “public domain” recordings can roughly be divided into two different sectors. First, there are recordings by still-famous artists which have recently become public domain. Typical examples would be Elvis Presley (early recordings) and Maria Callas. In these cases, the original record company may still keep some of the artist’s recordings available, but there may also be competing reissues from other companies, often at a lower price. Frequently the original company will only issue a selection of “greatest hits” and forget the others. Olavi Virta, the great Finnish singer recorded 600 tracks between 1939 and 1966. Only about 60 of them are on the market today.

For most “public domain” reissues, the original companies do not have the slightest interest in selling the recordings. As the Commission notes, the major record companies normally do not bother to publish records which sell fewer than 20,000 copies. These recordings, sometimes more than 100 years old, are usually issued for marginal audiences such as collectors of historical opera recordings, jazz, blues, and so on. The editions are may be small, as low as 500 or 1000 copies, and the producers are often hobbyists who do not have to make a living or even a profit from the reissues. The first such reissue company was William Seltsam’s International Record Collectors’ Club, founded in 1931, which issued recordings in editions of 50 copies. It is such companies which have kept the history of sound recording alive, often rescuing rare recordings long since lost by the original record companies.

The present Directive contains a “use-it-or-lose-it” provision which would require the original record company to reissue a record within one year from the date when it would otherwise have fallen into the public domain. Otherwise the company will lose the rights. This is good, but not sufficient, because a web release anywhere would apparently be enough to fulfil this requirement. The record company could make a recording available in a bit-reduced format for a short period in year 51, and if it does not sell in sufficient quantities, it could stay locked away for another 44 years even if it disappears from the market for several decades. In the meantime, audio formats will change, and the file bought on the web will become unusable. If it has been published in a copy-protected format, it will be illegal to break this protection. There is no requirement to register the reissue. How can anyone in the future know if a particular recording has been available somewhere two-three decades earlier, unless this information is registered somewhere?

Additional comments can be found in my previous blogs

http://blogit.yle.fi/node/2230
http://blogit.yle.fi/node/2234
http://blogit.yle.fi/node/2240
Next blogs: digital libraries
protection of co-writers

Pekka Gronow is sound archivist and adjunct professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Helsinki. He is the author of numerous books and articles on the recording industry, including “An International History of the Recording Industry” (2000).

Suomalaisille lukijoille: tämä ja seuraavat blogikirjoitukset on poikkeuksellisesti julkaistu englanniksi aiheen kansainvälisen merkityksen vuoksi.

Commission Proposal on a Directive for Term Extension. The recording industry.

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The EU Commission has recently proposed an extension of the copyright protection of sound recordings from 50 to 95 years. The complete documents can be found at

http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/copyright/term-protection/term-protection_en.htm

If the proposal is accepted, recordings first published in 2010 will stay protected until the year 2106, almost a century. Until then, the record company would have the exclusive right to control (most) uses of the recording, including copying, broadcasting and public performance.

The Commission motivates the proposal with declining record sales and the need to support creativity in the music industry. The Commission writes: “The EU recorded music industry has suffered a decline in record sales: sales of music CDs peaked in 2000 and have been falling at an average rate of 6 % ever since”. The loss of CD sales has not (yet) been replaced by sufficient income from online sales.

“In these circumstances”, says the Commission, “the European record industry faces the challenge of keeping up the steady revenue stream necessary to invest in new talent (…) a longer term of protection would generate additional income to help finance new talent and would allow record companies to better spread the risk in developing new talent.”

On first sight, the argument seems convincing. Record sales have declined somewhat, and record companies need income to finance new talent. But would the proposed extension work this way?

Sound recordings are already protected for 50 years, so will record companies invest more money in new productions on the expectation of (uncertain) additional revenue 51 years from today? This is not unlikely; the beneficiaries would be record companies which already own a back catalogue of recordings made 40 – 50 years ago.

Of the approximately 1,000 million records which are sold in Europe annually, about 80 % are produced by the four largest record companies, says the Commission. However, these companies are only responsible for a small fraction of all new records produced. There are more than a thousand small and medium-sized record companies in Europe. There are no European statistics on the number of new records issued, but in Finland alone, nearly two thousand new records appear every year. Only about ten per cent of these are produced by the majors. It is the small companies which create cultural diversity, but they do not have back catalogues.

If you go to a record shop, you will soon notice that most of the records displayed are recent productions. There are very few record companies which are more than 20 years old. As record companies grow older and their owners retire, their back catalogues are typically acquired by the larger companies, if they still have any commercial value.

How valuable is a back catalogue of 50-year old records? Curiously, the Commission does not present any studies on this. It is well known that record sales (as well as books and other media products) follow an “S” curve. Sales are focused on new product, and most records are withdrawn from the market when they are a few years old. A smaller number of best sellers stay in the catalogue longer, but as decades go by, their sales also decline. If the proposed 95-year term had been introduced a century ago, recordings made in the 1920s would still be protected today. How much are they sold today? I suggest that 90 years from now, the demand for recordings made in 2008 will be approximately as large as the demand for recordings made in 1918 is today.

In the Explanatory Memorandum, the Commission claims that “the large scale production of phonograms is essentially a phenomenon that commenced in the 1950s”. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The record business is already 110 years old, and it had its first crisis in 1907. By the Second World War, about a million of titles had already been recorded globally. According to Peter Martland, ten million records were sold annually in Britain in the 1910s. The present slump in record sales is nothing compared with the drop which occurred in 1930-33. The first documented global million-sellers were made in the 1920s. In their days, these artists were as popular as the Beatles were in the 1960s.

Do you remember Winifred Atwell, Max Bygraves and Laurie London? They were the best-selling European artists in the UK in 1958. These records are still protected within present the 50-year term and should be bringing income to their owners. You may say that the Beatles were bigger than Laurie London, they will be remembered longer, but in ten years’ time, many Beatles fans will also have passed away. If you are not British, who were the most popular recording artists in your country in 1958? Do their records still sell today?

Keeping this in mind, it is astonishing that the Commision quotes an unpublished (!) study which suggests that "a 45 year extension of the term of protection would create between £ 8.4 million and £ 163 million in additional revenues" in the UK alone.

It is important to note that these old recordings already exist. If there is such a demand for 51 to 95 year old records, someone should already be collecting this revenue, either the original companies or other companies specialising in public domain reissues. We all know that this is not happening. It should have been easy for the Commission to compile figures on the actual sales of records which are now approaching the end of the 50-year term from all European countries . It is very unlikely that they will be selling MORE in the coming years, if the term is extended. (Incidentally, there is nothing to prevent the original record companies to continue selling them in the future, even if the term is NOT extended. There is not that much competition on the reissue market, and the original record company should have the benefit of original master tapes, additional unissued takes, and better documentation).

It has been suggested that in the future, web music stores will have a wider selection of recordings than record shops – the “long tail” effect. This is possible, but at the moment there is little evidence of this. You can test this yourself by trying to buy European records from 1958 on the web. Record companies also derive income from secondary sources such as broadcasting and private copying. In broadcasting, the “S” curve is probably not as steep as in retail sales, but forty-year old records are not that much heard on the radio, not to speak of 80-year old ones. Such information should also have been available to the Commission.

The inevitable conclusion is that the only beneficiaries of the proposed extension are the four largest record companies, the only ones with significant catalogues of recordings which would otherwise soon fall into public domain. The additional income from the extension will be so small that it will not encourage investment in new production. The benefits of the proposed extension will be much smaller than the social and cultural costs, which I shall discuss later.

Additional comments can be found in my previous blogs

http://blogit.yle.fi/node/2230
http://blogit.yle.fi/node/2234
Next blog: reissues

Pekka Gronow is sound archivist and adjunct professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Helsinki. He is the author of numerous books and articles on the recording industry, including “An International History of the Recording Industry” (2000).

Suomalaisille lukijoille: tämä ja seuraavat blogikirjoitukset on poikkeuksellisesti julkaistu englanniksi aiheen kansainvälisen merkityksen vuoksi.

Sivut

Pekka Gronow toimi asiantuntijana radion äänitearkistoissa. Hän kirjoitti blogissaan äänitteiden historiaan, arkistointiin ja tekijänoikeuteen liittyvistä asioista.