[Upd-discuss] Question regarding European Copyright law and U.S. law

[John Howkins]

This debate will run and run (see yesterday's Elvis and Cliff Richard
articles).  In the meantime, both the US and EU industries continue to
increase their terms.  Does anyone know of a full, detailed, authoritative
comparative analysis of the relevant law on this?  (For example, how did th=
e
US use the EU Term Directive, which doesn=B9t include works-for-hire, as a
basis for increasing its works-for-hire term to 95 years?)
John




  On 1/1/05 10:03 pm, "Dean Kay" <deankay@earthlink.net> wrote:

> The argument is not at all fallacious and was made in all sincerity,
> Richard... and, here's why:
>=20
> In 1993 the European Union (EU) issued a Directive that harmonized the
> term of copyright protection across the EU.  The chosen term was that of
> Germany - 70 years after the death of the author.
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> Under the terms of the Berne Convention, the extended term was made
> available to foreign copyright owners on the basis of RECIPROCITY...
> that is, if the term of copyright in a country outside the EU was less
> than the term within the EU, copyrights created in the outside country
> could not partake of the extended term afforded copyrights created
> within the EU.
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> As entertainment products (and their copyrights) created in the United
> States provide a vast majority of the entertainment consumed in the EU,
> and throughout the rest of the world, for that matter, it would have
> been extremely unfair to US creators and copyright owners if they had
> have been prevented from enjoying the same protections their
> counterparts in the EU were granted.
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> The 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act was necessary to
> address the reciprocity issue.
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> Richard Stallman wrote:
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>>     One issue kept coming up in my research... the extension was
>>     necessary to put us (the U.S.) in line with Europe's copyright
>>     laws.
>>=20
>> This argument was widely stated, but it is completely fallacious.  The
>> US does not need to have the same copyright laws as Europe or any
>> other place.  The publishers invented this fictitious need as an
>> excuse for the change they wanted.
>>=20
>>     Can someone explain what this means? In what way(s) did it put us
>>     in line? Was it simply the length of the extension?
>>=20
>> Yes, exactly.
>>=20
>> But this law did not in fact make the US law the same as European law.
>> It extended the copyright term by 20 years for both author-copyright
>> works and works made for hire.
>>=20
>> Before the law, in one of those two cases (I forget which one) the
>> European copyright term was 20 years longer than the US copyright term. =
 In
>> the other case, Europe and the US had the same copyright term.
>>=20
>> Since the law extended US copyright in both of these cases, it made
>> Europe and the US equal in the case where they were different, and
>> different in the case where they were equal.  This shows that the
>> claim of a need for "harmony" was insincere.
>>=20
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>>=20
>>=20
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