Mike Chunn talks about the swirly world of ignorance, wayward politics and nonsense all focused on the word copyright.

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Tim and Neil Finn, when they sang It’s Only Natural had their voices mixed on the Woodface album by Bob Clearmountain who put no reverb on them. Perhaps he thought “let’s keep it natural”. It worked and that song bounces around the world to this day. Have a listen.

If you have a listen to Art Garfunkel sing I Only Have Eyes For You, you will find his vocal drenched in reverb. They call that sum effect “wet”.

What is reverb?
 
Reverb is a myriad number of echoes of differing lengths and strengths that combine to cause a storm that we ‘hear’ as sending that voice off into the distance. It swirls.
 
I'd like to talk today about a swirly world of ignorance, wayward politics and nonsense all focused on the word copyright, as it pertains to the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations currently being negotiated between – well – Trans Pacific nations. New Zealand is one. And big brother the United States is one too and it is they who are thrusting this thing into the limelight.

One of the provisions listed in a leaked print of this partnership (if it’s in fact the real thing) are changes to our copyright act in respect to “Life Of Copyright”. Who has alerted us to this? Well the Green Party's Gareth Hughes is one. And he states in the early stages of his online blog on the subject:

"Under a leaked draft of the TPP, copyright length is to be extended from 50 to ‘…not less than 95 years from the end of the calendar year of the first authorized publication of the work, performance, or phonogram,’ meaning music and recordings set to enter the public domain in New Zealand will take decades longer."

"With the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement negotiations having just occurred in Melbourne I’m urging the Government not to surrender New Zealand’s sovereignty on copyright so we can keep enjoying Kiwi Music in the public domain. An iconic song that would be impacted by the copyright extension is the Fourmyula’s "Nature" which was voted the best New Zealand song ever written. Produced in 1969 this song should enter the public domain in 2020 to be remixed, re-played, and re-imagined however under proposed TPP rules Kiwis would have to wait to 2065. Likewise Ray Columbus’s She’s a Mod, released in June 1964 wouldn’t enter the public domain till 2059."

Okay. Let’s look at this. “95 years”!  Where does it say that in the TPP? Here:

Each Party shall provide that, where the term of protection of a work (including a photographic work), performance, or phonogram is to be calculated:

• (a) on the basis of the life of a natural person, the term shall be not less than the life of the author and 70 years after the author’s death; and

• (b)  on a basis other than the life of a natural person, the term shall be:

• (i)  not less than 95 years from the end of the calendar year of the first authorized publication of the work, performance, or phonogram, or

“The Life Of A Natural Person”.  I don’t think any work of imagination in New Zealand has been created by someone who isn’t a natural person. No Martians, ghosts or elfin figures have painted, sung or written original works. So we can forget the 95 years. It’s 70 years. How unusual is that? It is unusual that New Zealand has 50 years of “Life Of Copyright” as virtually all other countries in the world have 70.
 
Now what is really of concern about all this isn’t Gareth Hughes time and effort spent on this caper as it always the duty of the opposition parties to stir, scuttle, protest and refute the legislative advances of government. We’ve seen that for centuries.

But what really comes to the surface when someone like Gareth pops up and ‘opens up this discussion’ are the truly banal ‘comments’ that follow it online. Their reverb cacophony is a ‘wet’ as ‘wet’ can get.
 
What are we talking about?
 
Under Gareth’s blog  - are responses from the public and here are a few.

• The exploitation of art by large corporate interests with the feigned ‘concern for the artist’ crap is just laughable. All this will do is further squash artistic innovation and culture and push us toward the carefully manicured ‘corporate’ art and culture that we are supposed to oh so enjoy.

• Extending copyright so egregiously, preventing the works that comprise our cultural heritage from entering the public domain, is just another example of the corporates stealing from the people.

• Part of what frustrates me about all of this is that historically it’s largely driven by a small minority of mega-corporations that want copyrights they own to never expire (yeah, that’ll encourage them to be creative for society’s benefit!),

The first interesting point here is that these commentators use pseudonyms. But there they are. The oft-proffered response to ‘extension of copyright’ seems to be that large corporations will benefit from it. I wonder if I might perhaps give three examples of how pathetic that response is. And we should start with a song like the recent big hit Girl In Stilettos by Annah Mac.

Broadcasting

Radio stations play music recordings all day every day. Some play Girl In Stilettos. It was a HUGE hit and they will play it forever. For each dollar that they pay APRA for the right to broadcast the song (the ‘musical work’ as it is referred to in the copyright act) Annah Mac gets around 85 cents. APRA retain the rest to run that songwriter’s association. Once that song goes out of copyright the radio stations don’t have to pay anybody. A big corporate makes more money when copyright finishes.

Art in books, postcards, souvenir shops etc

The copyright in a ‘visual work’ such as a painting is held by the painter. The actual physical embodiment of that ‘image’ (oils, inks, canvas etc) may be owned by someone – an art gallery perhaps. If the copyright in a painting ends (say one of Don Binney’s masterpieces – Wainamu Te Henga II painted some fifty metres from where I write this) anybody can take a photo of it and use it to make money on postcards in souvenir shops, gift cards, in books, on posters and so on. No matter how cheap and nasty those products are. Those businesses will have a free-range profit-driven environment. The only entity missing out is the estate of the painter.

Music in films

The film Mr. Pip will be out soon. The music was written in the main by Tim Finn. Once me old mate Tim dies and fifty years pass then the ‘big US corporate’ releasing and maintaining that film in stock won’t have to pay Tim’s family anything. They will make MORE money from it than when it was in copyright.

The extension of copyright to seventy years is a common sense salute of respect and acknowledgement for the work and dreams that underlie the bringing to fruition of our fellow citizen’s works of imagination.

Ignore the pathetic ‘reverb’ that accompanies this topic. They are the bouncing inanities of badly written jokes.