ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITARY OWNERSHIP

Apparently James Purnell - the minister for Creative Industries, it says here - has got plans to extend the copyright period for ELECTRONIC recordings, possibly from the current fifty years to as much as one hundred years.

Yes, one hundred years.

What for? Because they're happy to bend over backwards to please the major labels, and the Americans are doing it, and there's nobody in parliament who can see that there's any value in allowing things to come into the public domain.

Oh, you mean, what's the justification.... here's James Purnell:

“The music industry is a risky business and finding talent and artists is expensive. There is a view that long-term earners are needed so that the record companies can plough money back into unearthing new talent.

“Bands like Coldplay will make enough money for their company to help them discover around 50 or 100 bands.”

Well, yes, that's sort of true - although, generally, the idea is for the companies to raise money and return it to their shareholders rather than invest in new bands - clearly, EMI haven't managed to turn their earnings from Coldplay into 100 news bands, or even 50 - or, actually, even three or four. And nobody objects to the principle that record companies can recoup a little on their investment to re-invest elsewhere (let's pretend the system works for now, shall we?), but does EMI really want us to believe that, having found Coldplay, it's going to be 2105 before they'll have a band to replace that particular revenue stream? Surely any label that hasn't extracted maximum value from a recording in fifty years is in serious, serious financial trouble and should be being investigated rather than thrown a lifeline?

And isn't there a counter argument here: once those recordings come into public domain - after the original recording companies have had a full half-century to make their investment back, and some more on top - they're able to inspire a whole bunch of other talents and creatives to come up with new ways to exploit them? Sure, give the original owners a fair crack, but lets not fetter the potential of other, equally creative companies to make stuff, too.

[Thanks to John R. for the link for this one]

music copyright