Following up on his recent ArtLab post responding to the Pirate Party representative's attack on copyright, the Financial Times has published a letter from Songwriter Guild President Rick Carnes. Carnes writes...
Carnes also notes that "The real "restriction" on Mr Engström's access to an Elvis song is a paltry 99 cents for a download on iTunes. For that he wants us to abandon the copyright and patent laws that have been constructed over hundreds of years."Sir, Christian Engström of the Pirates party ("Copyright law threatens our online freedom", July 7) is absolutely correct in his assumption that Elvis's music does not belong to him. It belongs to great songwriters like Otis Blackwell, who wrote so many of Elvis's big hits such as "All shook up" and "Return to sender", and who fought for years to protect and strengthen US copyright law. Without copyright, Mr Blackwell would never have been able to create that "common cultural heritage" that Mr Engström wants to think of as his own.
He forgets that it isn't technology that "opens up new possibilities" - it is the people who create the technology, the very people who earn their livings from patents and copyrights.
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