Still, given the success of the Superman saga in getting at least some of the copyrights back, suddenly lots of people are looking to see what other copyrights can be reclaimed. Apparently, a bunch of musicians are now lining up to try to regain their rights from the labels starting in 2013 (the first year musical works are eligible). As the article notes, with record labels still too clueless to figure out how to successfully build business models around new acts, many still rely on sales of old music to bring in a lot of their revenue. If the labels lose the copyrights on much of that music... well... let's just say suddenly The Pirate Bay may be the least of their concerns.
Musicians Starting To Assert Copyright Termination Rights Against Record Labels
Particularly appropriate since I just bought the 30th Anniversay edition of Gary Numan's The Pleasure Principle...
Here's hoping BBC America broadcasts Synth Brittannia here in the US sometimes soon.
There's a new, free David Sylvian MP3 available on his website.
Warner Music engages in music piracy:
"MySpace are not equipped to deal with the notion that anyone other than a major [label] can claim a copyright," complained Grace Maxwell, Collins's wife and manager. Maxwell made the unpleasant discovery after trying to upload A Girl Like You, the singer's 1994 hit, to his own MySpace page. "Lo and behold," she wrote in a blog, "it would not upload. I was told Edwyn was attempting to breach a copyright and he was sent to the Orwellian MySpace copyright re-education page. Quite chilling, actually."
The trouble with accusing Collins of copyright infringement is that he's not infringing. "He owns the copyright," Maxwell underlined, "as he does for most of the music he's recorded in his life (preferring to go it alone than have his music trapped 'in perpetuity' to use the contract language of the major record company)."
Edwyn Collins stopped from sharing his music online
via @neilhimself
Friday there was an exhibit opening. There was a glass storefront, a crowd of observers and several machines. There were two friends, and I stayed for an hour before the crowd sent me home on a wave of indifference. The train was delayed, which often happens when I forget to bring a book.
I took a photo: COLLISION14
I’m learning how to manufacture time. It’s like printing money that you stitch together into a ribbon that wraps the Earth a dozen times, single-sided tender to pay for those shoes you use to walk backwards over your own footsteps, leaking ink onto your map, the ocean eroding your monolithic birthday cake into beach sand.
Pity the hands. They feel it first, just before they seize up and stop feeling anything.
