Re: [ARSCLIST] ^ Letter on British Copyright Term Extension

[Karl Miller <lyaa071@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 14 Sep 2006, Bob Olhsson wrote:

> Steven C. Barr wrote:
> >First, the concept of
> >unlimited copyrights only begins to make sense if EVERY artist (including
> >past artists) owns the copyrights to his/her/its music
>
> EVERY artist DOES own the copyright to his/her music unless they decided that it was worth their while to sell the rights to somebody else.
>
> For the life of me I don't understand why people seem to think this isn't the case.

My reading of Steven's comment is that unlimited copyrights make sense if
everyone is grandfathered into the system...in short, no public domain
anything.

Plus

Ok, I will split some hairs...suppose you think of a great tune and
whistle it on your way to work. Somebody hears you and they then notate
it. Who owns it? In the old days, you had to notate your music before you
could copyright it...today a recording can be used to copyright. I believe
the music has to be "fixed" in some way before one can make a claim to
ownership.

As an aside, I remember the absurd lengths we used in the old days to
notate our electronic music scores...

Karl