This is a shameless practice!

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PROFILE: Prof. Bernt Hugenholtz – Professor of Copyright Law – Amsterdam

Bernt Hugenholtz wears many hats. Currently a Professor of Copyright Law, University of Amsterdam, he’s also the Director of the Institute for Information Law in Holland. He is responsible for adapting the American version of the Creative Commons copyright license for Dutch law. He also serves as a member of the Dutch Copyright Committee and has also served as Chairman of the Intellectual Property Task Force of the European Commission. This month, BounceFM.Com chats with Prof. Hugenholtz to gain his insights on the future of copyrights, p2p file sharing and digital rights management. Here’s some of what he had to say:

“File sharing of copyrighted music without the authors’ permission is illegal, and in my opinion it should remain so.”

WHAT’S THE MOST COMMON COPYRIGHT MISTAKE MADE IN MUSIC?

Beginning composers and artists are often (mis)led to believe that they should assign all their copyrights to record companies and/or music publishers. This is an age-old and shameless practice that is fundamentally at odds with the principles of author’s rights protection, and will, I sincerely hope, one day be prohibited by law.

WHAT IMPORTANT TRENDS DO YOU SEE IN OUR INDUSTRY?

Alongside an increasingly dangerous trend towards further concentration in the record industry (the number of majors is decreasing every year), I see increasing numbers of artists and authors using the internet to promote and distribute their works independently, without using intermediaries. This is why Creative Commons is such an important project. It’s not just a package of easy-to-use licenses. It’s also a first step towards a truly ‘democratic’ distribution model, in which creative artists themselves set the terms of distribution, and control their own copyrights.

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