Is recording a cover of a song "worth more" than composing that song?
Who has more right to control the exclusive money-making abilities of their creation?
UK law says the composer does. UK recording industry says they're both worth the same.
Their most recent post quotes a Financial Times article on the issue that compares the music industry to a painter, which I think might strike a chord with some of my image creating friends:
I hired an artist to paint a portrait. I offered $500. He agreed. We had a deal. He painted the painting. I liked it. I gave him the money. A few years later he returned. "You owe me another $450" he said.We looked at the contract. "But you agreed to paint it for $500 and I paid you that amount." He admitted this was true, but pointed out that painters in other countries sometimes received higher amounts, as did sculptors in our own country. In fact, he told me, all British painters planned to demand another $450 for each picture they had already painted as well as for future pictures. This would "harmonise" our prices with other countries, put painting on the same footing as sculpture, and enable painters to hire more apprentices.
I have arguments for and against this analogy, but it gets the basics of the idea across. Copyright is a creator's job-contract. Toward the end of their contract they're trying to renegotiate the terms.
The confusing part is really just trying to understand why an audio recording is a special case and why it should have a different copyright from the thing being recorded (ie. the song).
I'm still not completely sure how this expiry really works. The copyright on the recording expires, but the copyright on the song still exists.
Musical works are protected by copyright until 70 years after the end of the calendar year in which the author died. After that, they fall into the public domain, which means that anyone can record or perform them without paying the original copyright owner.
I read this as, "before the copyright expires you cannot record or perform the work without paying the original copyright owner". Nothing about duplicating recordings of the song, just "record or perform". That is, create your own version of.
It makes the most sense if you're recording something that is public domain. You can't claim life+70 years protection on your version of that song (eg. classical music), but you can claim protection of the recording. Your version of it is special but "it" is in the public domain so technically anyone can copy it. The 50 years copyright protects that specialness. In 50 years you lose that protection and anyone can copy your recording.
But what if what you're recording is still in copyright after the 50 years copyright on your recording of it expires? The law seems to infer that can create a copy of a version of a copyrighted song and sell it when the mechanical rights expire.
How is this really any different from publishing a photograph of a copyrighted painting without permission from the painter? Perhaps it's not and perhaps that is the point.
Is broadcasting and reproducing of a recording directly connected to mechanical copyright. Is a broadcast or reproduction just a "copy" that lots of people can hear, and so therefore controlled by the 50 year law?
Radio stations (via APRA or equivalent) must pay the composer of a song money for each play. They don't pay the musician who played the song (ie. the mechanical version), they pay the composer who wrote the song. I'd take that as a radio broadcast being treated as a "performance" of the song, not a "copy".
I'd love someone to clear it up for me if they can? Is it confusing or am I just confused?
The way I currently read the laws, they place more emphasis on the right to record a version of a song (worth more, ie. life+70) than a particular recording of a song (50 years). That's the real debate here.
What is a "song"? Is the song the chords and words sent to the producer and Britney to record, written by a nameless face, or is it the crafted and produced recording of that "song"? Which is "worth more"?
It seems the recording industry thinks the recording of a creation (which they probably own) is worth more than the creation itself (which the artists own).
When I think of it that way, it solidifies a little.
Terrible band writes fantastic song, gets some money together and records it. They have 50 years to make money from that recording. They cannot because it is crap. Excellent-singer-and-producer want to re-record that song. They will have to pay the crap-musicians-but-excellent-songwriters money for that privilege. And they'll continue to have to pay them for 70 years after the last one of them dies. Every time the new version is played on the radio or performed live by excellent-singer or anyone the crap-musicians-but-excellent-songwriters will get paid. Pretty much forever.
Excellent-singer-and-producer get 50 years to make money from selling copies of the recording they've created. That's it.
The song is worth more than the recording of it.
That's the point.
In order to win this, the recording industry will have to argue that a version of a song is worth just as much as the song itself.
Maybe that's true...
Those that create their own paintings based on existing famous (but still in copyright) paintings may say that it is.
It's freaky.