Friday, June 17, 2005

British government planning to extend copyright on pop music

The British government wants to extend copyright laws to ensure pop songs are protected for almost twice as long as the current 50 years. This will in effect create a system more similar to the American, where copyright protection lasts more than 90 years.
The Sunday Times writes (although quite uncritically) on how the British government has announced plans to extend copyright for pop songs even long after the death of their authors. Like with the American 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (where currently active copyrights are given terms of 95 years from the date copyright was originally secured), is it a coincidence that these calls for copyright extension occur when certain corporate entities face their copyrights soon expiring?
In 1998, the rights for early Mickey Mouse were soon to expire — what happens? Extended copyright.
In 2005, the rights for 60's era Beatles and Rolling Stone material faces expiration under current British law (50 years after their original recording date) — what happens? It'll be exciting to see...

Added 17/6 2005:
Recording industry lobbyists claim that extending copyright terms will lead to further returns from a few, still profitable recordings from the 50s and 60s which can then be invested in new acts and artists. This perhaps might be true, but such a move would also cause many tens of thousands more unprofitable records to be kept out of the public domain and moulder slowly in private hands. This would be an immeasurable loss to current and future generations for the sake of increasing profits.
read more
/ James Davis
The only beneficiaries will the owners of limited number of valuable back catalogues — the large labels and a very few lucky performers — who will receive windfall gains. Meanwhile an extension would lock up for no-one's benefit the vast number of old works that no longer have commercial value — a huge loss to the public domain and our culture generally.
read more
/ Rufus Pollock

posted by Jonas Andersson @ 12:20 pm