Copyright History: new movie
p2p news / p2pnet: If you’re a p2pnet regular, you’ll recognize the name Rick Fulkerson. He and his family live in Coos Bay, Oregon, where he owns and runs a small computer store north of the city.
To the point, however, he’s also a dedicated amateur movie maker whose work punches large holes in the entertainment cartels.
Fulkerson created RIAA Copying or Stealing and RIAA Porno, among others, and his latest epic is entitled Copyright History.
What’s behind it?
“One of my main concerns, as I read about the copyright struggles, is what our forefathers intended in the constitution,” he told p2pnet.
“They had many of the same copyright debates we have today. They recognized that individuals who create works of art or inventions needed to have time to make a profit from their work. No one on either side of the issue can dispute it. The constitution guarantees this for a limited time, which was originally seven years from my understanding. This also allows those works to eventually enter the public domain for the enrichment of everyone.
“However, today’s mega media giants have tapped into the public domain and profited by it have then locked up those works with their own copyrights.
“Now they’ve had copyright laws extended to the point where they grossly subvert the Constitution’s original intent.
“At this point, even the artists and creators of the works don’t own or profit from their creations. They just earn a salary while the corporations reap the profits.
“If this continues, public domain will become virtually non-existent and creativity will suffer.
“I also believe this goes a lot further than just copyrights and patents. The side effect of this is that information in all forms of media can be effectively controlled by a handful of major corporate giants on the national level.
“This is dangerous and scary to me especially when the governments of the world are embracing these practices. I also can’t understand why artists support this system.
“I’m trying to show all this in this short video clip.”
Download the full .avi here.
You’ll enjoy it ; )
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November 11th, 2005 at 7:46 pm
The message of Rick Fulkerson is totally on target.
Let me show an examples:
Peermusic, a very large music publisher, says my father assigned 20 songs to them in 1952. I disagree on this assignment claim. My opinion is that the songs were obtained by Peermusic, as a Peermusic letter said, WITHOUT THE AUTHOR SUSPECTING”. I swear that this unbelievabe story is true.
In 2001 we sued, Peermusic because they were licensing to others songs we owned. During trial it was revealed that many of the songs were never copyright registered by Peermusic. At the time, 1952 to 1976, if a song was published (a Peermusic obligation as a publisher who had to exploit all songs assigned to them) without a copyright registration, the copyright was lost and the song went into the public domain, feature of the law has been eliminated.
The Peer explanation (I swear that this unbelievabe story is true) : By not registering the songs they would extend the copyright period and the initial period of protection of 28 years did not apply. Peermusic said it was a technique they used to extend copyright. In my opinion the so called technique is just an illegal trick to beat the law. Peermusic claimed in effect that by not registering the songs, then Peermusic would have rights per the new law effect in 1978, to 70 years after the death of the author. Since my father died in 1993, the songs now have rights until year 2063, for Peermusic, the judge said, I call this lack of registration the COPYRIGHT DURATION TRICK.
The Peermusic allegations (perjury may be a better word) would mean that Peer enjoyed protected ownership of 111 years whereas in 1952 the already expanded copyright protection was for two 28 year periods, initial and a renewal, for a total of 56 years. So, Peermusic doubled the copyright protection period for them by using what the COPYRIGHT DURATION TRICK. Peermusic explained the COPYRIGHT DURATION TRICK to the judge who, it seems thought it was a good idea, because he said the songs belonged to Peermusic because (I swear this is true) Peer “exercised its rights by making a timely filing for renewal is, therefore, the present legal owner of the renewal copyrights in the aforementioned songs.”. Of course there was no timely filing for registration because as Peermusic said, they used the COPYRIGHT DURATION TRICK of not filing at all. I swear that this unbelievabe story is true.
BTW, by Peermusic not registering the songs, the renewal period after 28 never arrived, thereby depriving the author or the heirs, their right to get the songs back, as required by the law. It meant that the COPYRIGHT DURATION TRICK not only extended the copyright duration but it also took away the legal rights thet belonged to the author (my father) of his heirs. This meant nothing to the judge. I swear that this unbelievabe story is true.
As we can see from this case, a few lies, a few tricks and some perjury can get copyright extension far beyond what the law allow, and then what the law allows is far beyond what was the constitutional intention.
This is why there are 277 claims of ownership for the Star spangled banner, a song that is in the public doamin. Here the trick is different. Just change the “arrangement”and say that the newly arranged song is yours.
Actually the list of tricks is endless. Someone should write a book about this. A proposed title: THE COPYRIGHT LAW IS A HUGE SCAM.
It is all a matter of tricks.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
November 12th, 2005 at 10:31 am
Amazing, you know your history well. That’s why you one of P2PNET’s experts.
Good job, and keep posting insightful comments. I as well as many others enjoy reading them!
November 12th, 2005 at 10:35 am
That’s very informative. We need to fight the “big media” cartel by taking over the distribution channel. Stuff like this is great. Heck, we can gain experience from these shorts and make future length films in the future — films that will COMPETE directly with Hollydud’s shitzz.
And competition for the distribution channel is what these JOKERS FEAR the most!!!
November 12th, 2005 at 1:20 pm
copyrighthistory.mpg is damaged file on the server, just stops midway.
November 12th, 2005 at 5:32 pm
You’re right. I tried and it only downloaded a little over 3 megs. you’ll have to download the AVI file until it gets fixed.
November 13th, 2005 at 5:21 pm
My fault – I had trouble uplolading it, so I’ve removed the url. But the .avi file is OK.
Cheers!
November 16th, 2005 at 7:13 am
If you don’t want to download the file but would instead perfer streaming I have uploaded it to http://media.putfile.com/Copyright-History-Creative-commons hosting is provided free by putfile.com