Comments on: Not-so-golden-oldies: have your cake and eat it

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:13:15 +0000

AND PATENT DURATION?

âA 95-year term would bridge the income gap that performers face when they turn 70,”

Then, to be consistent and to treat engineers, scientists and inventords the same way as performers, why not extend patents from the current 18 years to 95 years.

Now that would be a boom for reserch and development and society would really benefit. Certainly more and better, medicines and technologies could and do more for humanity than more comic books, pornography, crap movies and music, the type of flashy works mostly incentivated by excessive copyright terms.

Development of medicines and technologies are generally much costlier and require much more complex knowledge than one create one of the crap songs pushed today and that make millions for record companies. The inventor of the mouse neve made one off his invention because the patent ended just before the personal computer went graphical and mouse sales took off. Does this make any sense? Of course not.

Seriously, Iam not advocating longer patent periods (or patents at all). It’s just that politicians apply disparate logic to entertainment vs science and technology.

Just food for thought.

By: Rafael Venegas

Rafael Venegas — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:19:20 +0000

Laws are never supposed to apply backward in time.
Now it turns out that based on a new law you can be jailed for something you did before the laws was passed.

Pensions are supposed to be based on money someone put in the pension plan.
Now it turns out that this new pension plan requires no money to be put in the plan.

Pension money is supposed to go to the pensioner.
Now it turns out that the pension can be paid to the employer, the so called rights holders.

Another post says “Singer Lyle Lovett has sold 4.6 million albums in the USD since 1991 and his most recent release, It’s Not Big It’s Large, has sold about 145,000 since last September, according to Nielsen SoundScan, says Billboard.”.

If active performers such as Lovett, who can still produce more work (if paid) are not paid, why bother with the retired and dead ones?

Just what is the incentive, and for whom?

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 01:19:18 +0000

90 years? Would they even be alive by then? Even if they had performed in their 20s they’d still have to be over a century old to be living until the end of this royalty collection period.

Perhaps these pensions should be paid by cheque directly to these artists; that way, even after these dinosaurs shift past their mortal coil, they’ll only get to use the money if they can cash it. (Taken from a joke I once saw)

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:32:10 +0000

I am forced to wonder why anyone would need millions of dollars a year in their old age retirement even if they’ve blown all their previous wealth, since they could die at any time. Most people live on pensions anyway. Why should they get all this extra money without earning it if they’re too lazy to work?

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 22:22:14 +0000

Again with the “it’s our retirment fund” crap. I have to put away money I make now for my retirement, why should someone else keep getting paid for work they did 50 years ago, let alone 90 years ago.

By: Alter_Fritz

Alter_Fritz — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:14:19 +0000

to address one point of Fred:
“I mention this with the real trepidation that SoundExchange will intentionally stop updating the list so that it will look like the project has failed, thus proving how hard it is to find people and pay them. Reality has never been an obstacle for them, as long as they can manipulate perception.”

If it turns out that such a behaviour of SUX is to be expected in the future, I suggest that you 2 “record keepers” will ~~strike~~ on your (hopefully comming) updates of that list those entries where Fred can say for sure that the person(s) in question did get hold of the money robbers and made them pay.

If you manage to do that, we could prevent that angry pirates that hate the labels but love the artists they pirate start to annoy poeple on the list with repeated “hey did you knew that you have people that owe you money waiting that you contact them?” mails.

Just as an example: PUR on the list, I had back then when the issue surfaced first time on p2pnet contacted via their fan forum. I guess so that issue should have reached the artists that are “PUR” and that entry should vanish some updates of the lsit from now.