UK Rejects Extending Music Copyright

timrichardson writes "The British Government has rejected extending copyright for sound recordings. This is an important development in the face of trends to extend copyright duration, although it leaves British copyright protection for music recordings at a shorter duration than for written works. The decision came despite fierce lobbying from the large British music industry. The music industry will now lobby directly to the European Commission, but without the support of the national government, its position is significantly weakened. British copyright for music recordings therefore remains at 50 years after the date of release of a recording, in contrast to 95 years in the US and 70 years in Australia."

Comments

Re:*heh*

[IndieKid]

I dunno, if the remaining Beatles survive another 6 years then their early work will be out of copyright in their lifetime.

Cliff Richard will start losing royalties two years before that.

List of countries' copyright length

[dvice_null]

List of countries' copyright length
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries'_co pyright_length

AFAIK the EU has ruled that length should be 70 years, so this should make UK almost unique in the Europe. But there are several other countries that use 50 years. Personally I think the copyright should hold only certain amount of years, since publishing. The current law assumes that people die relatively young (under 200 years old), while some scientist bulieve that this will change in the near future and people could live thousands of years.

Re:List of countries' copyright length

[Ngwenya]

AFAIK the EU has ruled that length should be 70 years, so this should make UK almost unique in the Europe

I think you might be mistaking the authorial copyright (life + 70 years) versus the mechanical copyright (50 years from publication). In the case of music, the composer(s) are assigned the copyright, so that anyone covering the song must give royalties to the composer. The mechanical copyright extends only to the actual recording of a particular song. So, in a few years, the Beatles tracks will enter the public domain, but anyone wishing to re-record a Lennon-McCartney Beatles number will still need to render money to Paul McCartney (and I guess Yoko Ono).

The complaints from the record labels was that the mechanical copyright needs to be extended to 95 years. I think they're content to leave the authorial copyright where it is.

I don't think the UK is out of wack with the rest of the EU. We harmonised copyright terms in 1995 (which was a sodding disaster, since films moved from 50 years from first showing, to life of director/screenwriter/music composer + 70. Thus making film copyright essentially forever).

--Ng

Re:*heh*

[MetalPhalanx]

And tell me, what do you know of the music industry? Or are you just another arm-chair critic? Do you think "Knowing someone" is all that it takes? Let me ask a question... If your boss gave you half a million dollars and said to hire a team for whatever important project, would you take someone you knew who wasn't in the higher end of the talent pool? That'd be asking to lose your job. It's the same thing here. "Knowing someone" is enough to possibly get the talent shark to pop your CD in ahead of the other 50 CDs he's been given in the last week. It won't get you anything else. Unfortunately, they only choose the bands that they think will make them the most money, not the most musically diverse or interesting.

Yeah, knowing someone who is in the business will help you, but probably less so than knowing someone who already works for a company that you want to work for. As far as putting up with shit, musicians put up with some rather slimy people. Not to provide too much of a generalization but bar and club owners tend to not be the most wholesome crowd. Imagine busting your ass, pulling in a crowd of about 100-150 people @ $10 a ticket each + whatever the bar makes in drinks, and then getting paid $300, which is then split 5 ways... $60 per head is not really a lot of money. Or you could drive your collective asses to another city, probably in a large vehicle which isn't too good with the mileage, only to get told the gig is canceled/postponed and someone forgot to tell you. It'd be like going to work one morning and getting told to go back home, that they didn't need you that week and you weren't getting paid.

And no-one ever said you don't get rejections and sarcasm and all those lovely things from other jobs... But musicians put up with more of it than many. I'm speaking as a musician local to my city, who is trying to branch out at the moment.