What is this guy smoking ?
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080214-eu-commissioner-lets-extend-music-copyrights-to-95-years-ars-50-years-is-plenty.htmlComing soon to a European country near you: longer copyright periods! That's the proposal from EU Internal Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy, who wants to extend the copyright term for musicians from 50 to 95 years. His proposal will be presented in the next several months.
From the perspective of those who think that current copyright terms are plenty long enough to provide incentives for artists to create, a 45-year extension in copyright seems grossly excessive. When the musicians in question created their works—works to which they rightly deserve limited copyright protection—they knew the trade-offs going into the studio. The government would offer a 50-year monopoly on controlling copies, plenty of time to monetize a work before it enters the broader pool of cultural materials known as the public domain.
Now, years after implicitly agreeing to the compromise, musicians want to nearly double the copyright term
The UK government has already made clear that it feels the time limit is an acceptable trade-off for artists and consumer alike, I agree.
Lets be honest we all enjoy music and we have all purchased large amounts of music that we have heard, we have even purchased the same music in different formats often updating older media types for the latest type and of course paying again, this we dutifully do as fans for music we like, we are keeping our half of the bargain and whilst it may be a disappointment to the artists to see a revenue stream finish its term it doesn't mean fans wont continue to purchase their releases even then, this is the real reason for a fixed limit, its designed to reward and encourage the artist/producer of the work to make further works.
Lets be fair here can they really expect to retire and live off a single hit record, I think artists who believe that is the case are being disingenuous
