'That's All Right' Soon To Enter UK Public Domain

jwlidtnet writes "Reuters is reporting that Elvis's "That's All Right"--currently an unlikely hit in Great Britain--is soon to enter the public domain in that country, followed by other milestones of popular music as Britain's fifty-year protection period comes to an end. Naturally, rights owners are outraged, regarding it as a "wakeup call" for Britain to adopt something similar to the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, to end this "discrepancy between the United States and the EU." Copyright law uniformity has of course been a sore issue in recent years, with the exportation of "DMCA-alike" legislation raising the ire of many. Uniformity on an issue this divisive might be difficult to achieve politically."

Comments

It entered the public domain 20 years ago..

[Anonymous Coward]

..in japan.

Re:I hope the governments don't give in

[kuroth]

> When he wrote the song

Elvis didn't write That's All Right. It was written by Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup.

The article is talking about the copyright to Elvis's recording of the tune. The tune itself is presumably already in the public domain in Great Britain.

Re:Discrepancy?

[BenjyD]

google is your friend: From here: Sound Recordings and broadcast programmes are 50 years from the end of the calendar year in which work was created/released. Everything else, including the copyright of the actual music, is life+70 years, or "an insane length of time" as I like to call it.

Re:Incentive

[Motherfucking Shit]

If this recording enters the public domain, what incentive will Elvis have to produce new music?

As a Memphian, I hope the answer is "none." We already get invaded twice a year (once for Elvis Birth Week, and once for Elvis Death Week with Maximum Candlelight Vigil Ceremony Love), that's plenty. Last week we had the additional influx of tourists bleating about "That's All Right's" 50th anniversary and the worldwide coverage it brought. It's actually rather interesting that nobody mentioned that a copyright was lapsing - particularly on that song - until after the fact...

Anyway, if it turns out that Elvis is still alive, and he records a duet with Tupac or Biggie, my head is going to explode. No more incentives for Elvis to produce new music, please :)

Not in the public domain

[Florian Weimer]

Even in Europe, the song itself is not in the public domain because Athur Crudup, its composer, died only as late as 1974. In most European countries, works of performing artists are only protected for 50 years, but for the actual lyrics and music, the clock starts running after the author's death (and runs for 50 or 70 years).

That means that the European rules mainly cause classical music to enter the public domain at this point.

Point out the *good* things about copyright expiry

[jesterzog]

I'm not in the UK or anywhere in the EU, but for those who are I'd like to point out that about now would be a very good time to bring to the attention of your politicians things like Project Gutenberg, which directly benefit from the expiry of copyright.

Certainly part of the problem is that it's not always clear what possible benefits there could possibly be for ever letting works exit copyright. Gutenberg is an active project that's both becoming succesful, and demonstrates that people are out there trying to make an active effort to benefit from existing law.

If politicians don't realise that people are benefiting from existing law, they'll have far less reason to consider not changing it when lobbied by the corporates. It's a bonus that Gutenberg can quite correctly claim that rather than ripping off other people's work, it's saving and making accessible a lot of valuable resources that most likely would simply have vanished otherwise.... and without a reasonable expiry of copyright this simply coldn't happen.