UK Government Will Not Extend Copyright

[GhostShip]

It looks like UK filesharers who enjoy many classic and older generation music will be safe in the knowledge that they are not breaking copyright law on many of the older recordings.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070724-uk-government-resists-music-industry-pressure-caps-copyrights-at-50-years.html

Music copyrights will remain fixed at 50 years after the British government decided against extending their term to as much as 95 years. In May, the Parliamentary Select Committee on Culture, Media, and Sport had recommended that the term be lengthened to bring it more in line with copyright terms in the rest of the world (95 years in the US).

The music industry had lobbied the government hard for a copyright extension, saying that it was necessary to protect the rights of musicians, especially groundbreaking acts whose older songs were about to hit the 50-year limit.

Critics of extended copyright protection point out that musicians already enjoy 50 years of royalties and that copyright laws attempt to balance the rights of artists with a desire to encourage new works and ensure a rich public domain for new artists to build on.

Although the Parliament committee supported extending the copyright term, a committee charged with examining the UK's IP laws said that expanding the copyright term was not a good idea. Former Financial Times head Andrew Gowers, who led the committee that produced the report, said earlier this year that his committee's work actually led them to conclude that the length of music copyrights should be reduced, not increased. Political realities made arguments for reducing copyright terms unworkable, he said.

This is fair and just in that copyright law has been seen to operate as it was originally proposed, that is the granting of a temporary monopoly to those creating music/lyrics/or  vocal works and allowing them to earn revenue for a fixed period of time only.

To have extended this time would have lead to a significant portion of music being blocked from ever being heard again for in some cases nearly 100 years, something that flies against what the protection was intended for in the first place, the creation of artistic/cultural works for the enrichment of society, not the monopolisation of such creativity   

[Bearded Blunder]

My personal opinion is that copyright on music printed works etc should be "The lesser period of either 30 years OR 12 months after the publisher ceases to have the work available for distribution."  If they want to hold their rights to stuff.. then force them to make it available anything less is a form of censorship.  In this modern digital age they could have all such works available for download without the overheads of producing physical meda after all...

On software it should simply expire 12 months after the program ceases to be both available and supported.

[GhostShip]

I agree with the interesting aspect you raise Merlin, many folks who are willing to pay hard earned to enjoy certain peices of entertainment are blocked from doing so as the original rights owners are refusing to supply or make the work available at any cost, this as you say is censorship and something I have experienced first hand in trying to obtain a "deleted" album or two only to find there is no legal way of obtaining such material.

Some would suggest this is an interesting way to ensure an artist can be secretly blackballed and blocked from gaining effective royalties from their work, perhaps I,m becoming too cynical 

[Bearded Blunder]

I've been there myself.. it's not funny when you really want something they've decided not to bother listing anymore, as you say, there is no legal way to obtain it, which is simply wrong, since your only recource in such situations is an illegal copy.. the situation should be regularised so that it IS legal to make that copy..

[SamSeeSam]

It's best that the law would be on the lines of "free for general use if no publisher makes copies of the music/movie for 12 months"
What's the point of keeping it under copyright if you don't even want to make the movie?

Cheers