But First Rugby: Its Wednesday so it is all on again. Three games today and I think Georgia - Scotland will be the one to see. We will be at the Quiz so will have to keep track on the big screen. The Herald team of the week is a real mixture - with even Romania & Japan featuring.
A hobbyhorse: Copyright. Yeah right!
It took three years of doing, but the music industry has finally won its European battle to extend copyright on sound recordings for another 20 years.
So who now cares. The recording industry probably had a party to celebrate their 20 year out of date business model. The companies (not the artists) who think they will make the $$$ will of course extend it again in about 15 years.
What planet are these people living on?
This is a farcical attitude towards a law that was originally designed to protect the creators of artistic and creative works for a fixed and finite period of time. It seems now that legislators are happy to extend that fixed and finite period whenever lobbyists want.
There's a very good reason that copyright and patent protection is only supposed to offer a fixed, finite term of protection.When that protection expires, it enables others to build on those works, for the betterment of mankind -- either by way of derivative creative works or improved technologies. An example is West Side Story. This was based on Romeo & Juliet. If copyright had been in place we would have lost the fabulous production that came about.
Now, at least in theory, that objective has been shot down by the seemingly limitless extensions to copyright protection terms that have recently appeared in the USA and EU.
However, it's all totally academic anyway.
While the recording studios and copyright holders might think they've retained their license to print money -- they're being awfully myopic and naive.
You see, no matter what the legislators try to do, the copyright cat is already out of the bag -- thanks to the relentless march of technology.
