The Power of Backroom Lobbying: How the Music Industry Got a Copyright Extension

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday April 28, 2015 @06:12PM from the you-wouldn't-download-a-lobbyist dept.

An anonymous reader writes: The Canadian government's unexpected budget decision to extend the term of copyright for sound recordings came as a surprise to most copyright watchers, but not the music industry lobby, which was ready with a press release within minutes. How did the industry seemingly know this was coming? Michael Geist reports that records show the extension is the result of backroom lobbying with monthly meetings between senior government officials and music industry lobbyists paving the way for copyright term extension without public consultation or debate.

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here's what really happened... by Anonymous Coward · 2015-04-28 18:33 · Score: 5, Informative

from the same site.. interesting insight into what really happened... http://www.michaelgeist.ca/201...
the songs themselves had a longer copyright term than the recordings of them. an enterprising company started selling music that fell in that gap.. songwriters still got paid but the original distributing labels (sony, universal, etc) got left out.. they got mad and did what big companies with governments wrapped around their corporate fingers do.. they got laws changed the way they want.