Thursday, February 12, 2009

EU Committee votes to extend copyright duration from 50 to 95 years

According to this report in Billboard, the European Parliament's legal affairs committee has approved an extension of copyright term for music recordings from 50 years to 95 years. Any increase would have to be approved by the Council of Ministers. Also, according to Billboard, the French and German governments are backing the proposal, while the U.K. government supports a 70-year copyright term for sound recordings.

Keywords: lawyer digital copyright law online internet law legal download upload peer to peer p2p file sharing filesharing music movies indie independent label freeculture creative commons pop/rock artists riaa independent mp3 cd favorite songs intellectual property portable music player

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Does copyright really need to extend this far? If artists haven't profited sufficiently from their work after 50 years, why do they deserve an additional 45 years to do so?

Extending the length of copyright beyond the average artist's lifespan doesn't really benefit the artist much, as most will be dead when their works should pass into the public domain. Instead, this change serves only to benefit the companies which hold the copyrights. The result of this change is that many copyrighted works will be withheld from the public domain for an additional 45 years, while making little to no additional revenue for the original artist or the copyrights holder.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous: there are better places than this to discuss who benefits from copyright extension. Which isn't to say your observations are inaccurate.

See this wonderful quote: http://yupnet.org/boyle/archives/41#26

XYZZY

Jadeic said...

Such is the industry's woeful track record in preserving the master recordings of the songs for which they hold the copyright that by the end of this proposed extension of the copyright term many of the historically important but commercially worthless tracks will be irredeemably lost to the public domain. This is the true crime that is being perpetrated - with the apparent blessing of our governments. The industry is ever willing to dub the sharing of a handful of tracks as piracy. Well, this is larceny on a grand scale akin to a multi-million bank heist. I have nothing but contempt for the music industry mandarins.

Dave

Anonymous said...

This man is forced to point out that every work currently under copyright was created, marked, and sold under the old or existing rules. Even the copyright rules of 50 years ago have been quite sufficient to the purposes intended for them. How do these new extensions benefit society overall?

1: Can anyone show even a single piece of work that wasn't created under the present rules, but would have been created if these extensions were in place?

2: This may actually reduce the amount of creative expression since reuse of public domain ideas and expressions will be greatly diminished.

Copyright was once perpetual and this was finally seen to be a really bad idea. Now we back to dealing with people who refuse to learn from history.

This copyright extension is a feel good idea to benefit almost exclusively a few large corporations and the estates of a very few outstanding entertainers. It screws over everybody else.

{The Common Man Speaking}