I can see no reason why anyone would suggest extending copyrights for more than 50 years on a single work, it kind of makes you wonder how much those pushing this agenda are being paid.
http://www.contentagenda.com/articleXml/LN765027933.html?industryid=45174Last month the European Union Internal Market Commissioner, Charles McCreevy, proposed extending Europe's term of copyright in recordings from the current 50 years to 95 - identical to the current U.S. term for any recording made prior to 1972.
The alleged grounds for the McCreevy proposal are that recording royalties often make up the sole pension for musicians, and that with people living longer, a 50-year term is no longer adequate. If we infer an average starting age of 18, the proposed 95-year copyright term implies that the life expectancy of the typical ex-rocker is now 113 years . Besides, all working citizens in the EU already contribute to pension schemes, so it is absurd to suggest that musicians are somehow outside the system.
Ultimately, the European Commission must decide whether the alleged benefits to a few miraculously long-lived pop stars can provide sufficient grounds for allowing this muddled piece of legislation to deprive the rest of us of our 20th century musical heritage.
Lets be fair here greed is greed however you label it, no one is depriving artists of their legal rights here , they are aware of the 50 year limit, its not only selfish of them to try to shift the goal posts when it suits them the real issue here is who actually benefits from this, most artists are happy to have their music repopularised at some stage, this occurs all too infrequently under the current time scale as most artists have signed away their rights to record companies, who it is reasoned are the real force behind pushing this legislation.
