Cliff's law

Of course the copyright extension in recorded music has gone through. But there is one small thing we can do. We can still name it:

A spokesman at one body sounded pained when I referred to the "Cliff Richard law".

"Think of the hard-up session musicians not Cliff Richard," he told me, claiming that thousands of struggling artists would now be guaranteed a pension.

This is, naturally, bollocks, as most hard-up session musicians are hard-up because they have their rights bought out when they make the recording.

But the idea that calling the theft of half-century old records from the public domain "the Cliff Richard Law" upsets the copyright industry makes it imperative that we always, always call it the Cliff Richard Law.