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

Posted by Soulskill on 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.

5 of 109 comments (clear)

  1. here's what really happened... by Anonymous Coward · · 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.

  2. The lobby's doing its job by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's a disgusting, dirty, sordid job, and deserves all the contempt it gets.

    But the real traitors are the politicians in bed with those lobbyists. Supposedly representing the greater interest, in reality just serving their own greed.

    Those should go to jail, no less.

  3. How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Bribes.

    Calling it lobbying is just sugar coating it.

  4. Freudian slip by tao · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For some reason I read that as "paying the way for copyright term extension". After realising that I'd misread it I corrected myself. Then corrected myself again when I realised that the misread version makes more sense.

  5. Re:No surprise by itzly · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Secret talks between government and industry isn't really democracy.