Copyright law is broken

simon gray — 2023-04-26, 07:44:43

I’m not a fan of Ed Sheeran’s music, but I’m absolutely a fan of the way he consistently stands up for the principle that all creative work is fundamentally based on all the creative work which has preceded it — all creative work is essentially a mash-up or uses samples, some of it explicitly, some of it by virtue of flowing through the veins.

This line from his testimony in his latest trial sums it up well:

‘Sheeran responded that he sometimes mixed together songs with similar chords at his performances, and appeared to grow frustrated when Ms Rice cut him off.

"I feel like you don't want me to answer because you know that what I'm going to say is actually going to make quite a lot of sense," he said.
"You could go from Let it Be to 'No Woman, No Cry and switch back," Sheeran continued under oath, referring to the Beatles and Bob Marley classics’

International copyright law when it comes to protecting creativity is fundamentally broken — it’s not written with a view to protecting the rights of creators to earn from their work and protect them from being ripped off by others, it’s written with a view to enabling multinational publishing conglomerates to go on fishing expeditions to see how they can trip people up on minor technicalities into out of court settlements.

 #music #creativity #law #publishing #copyright 

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The last remaining socially acceptable form of racism

simon gray — 2010-05-04, 11:21:07

Whilst there’s no denying that racism still exists in Britain, it is fair to say that by and large, racism is now considered socially unacceptable. Except, that is, racism against one particular group – and no, I don’t mean people with ginger hair:

An emergency notice has been served on an illegal gipsy camp, which was set up at the weekend on greenbelt land in Meriden. It is believed the travellers had purchased the plot of land from a landowner but did not have permission to build on the site.

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Travellers bulldozing a field in a peaceful Solihull village to create a caravan site have been ordered to stop work by the authorities. Angry residents set up a road block with farming trucks stopping lorries taking building materials to the site.

This is not, as is often the case, travellers just moving onto a piece of common land and setting up, or even a case of them moving on to somebody else’s land without permission. This piece of land, they have legally bought.

Admittedly, they haven’t got planning permission to set up a camp on the land – intending instead to try to gain retrospective planning permission part way through the work. This is of course still illegal – but is a common practice carried out by big time developers and small time homeowners for their rear extensions alike. Overwhelmingly, when applied for, retrospective planning permission is granted.

But in this case, planning permission for the travellers’ site probably won’t be granted – even though [...]

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