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