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Steve, I have to disagree. How many performer have total control over their historical performances, and do direct licensing? Very, very, few. (The
Rolling Stones (post 1971) is the only one that comes to mind). In most cases, the performers receive a low royalty percentage, with the company retaining the majority of the gross. So who is actually getting protected? The performer is the poster child, (protect the artist...they need it!) but who gets the majority of the money? I'll bet the artists acting as lobbyists are subsidized, by the corporations holding the rights control, just like a concert tour. As I keep saying, follow the money... (Remember, a cynic is a surly blackguard who insists on see the world as it is, rather that as it should be.)
Now perhaps I should use EMI (or Warner Music) as the causitive corporations to complain about, but the Mouse House has had such a long history of being at the lobbying forefront of every kind of copyright extension, I felt it wouldn't be libelous to ascribe the credit to it.
All copyright extension legislation has been lobbied for of, by, and for corporations holding rights control. Their fiduicary responsibility requires them to. They cannot abandon a revenue stream for their shareholder, and the long term public good be damned.
But copyright was always created as being a limited wasting asset. I refuse to watch the frog get boiled slowly. Public domain is the patrimony of the whole human race, not a legal accident to be erased a bit at a time in the name of a legal fiction's bottom line.
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