Thursday, February 16, 2006

China collects music fees - SCREWS artists!

China, in contrast to America, makes no bones about what its copyright laws are used for. Evidently, China is going to crack down on independent music companies, insisting that only state-approved assocations can collect music use fees from entertainment venues and websites. Let's look at the impact of this. Musicians now cannot go to sites such as a Chinese version of Creative Commons and retain their copyright rights - in fact, this is saying there are no copyright rights unless the rights are held by a government sponsored company. Think about the absolute censorship possibilities here. Chinese government-affiliated companies will certainly not allow musicians who sing songs that are critical of the government to have copyright rights. This just shows yet another way in which copyright law can be and in fact is being used to censor artists.

2 comments:

qrswave said...

Yes, it's pretty bad. Isn't it?

but, then there's always the great incentive copyright gives people to be creative, right?

Red Tulips said...

Hahaha. I think this shows how copyright can be and is being misused.