UK Culture Secretary Calls for Music Copyright Term Extension December 17, 2008 By Bill Jones
It wouldn’t be Christmas without music, and last week, Andrew Burnham, the UK's Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, delivered a Christmas present to the UK’s music creators. Having previously announced that it would adopt of all the recommendations made in 2006's Gowers Review for reforming the UK copyright system, Burnham last Thursday announced a major shift in UK Government thinking: It will reject one of the Gowers recommendations and accept the music industry’s view that copyright term in sound recordings should be extended to 70 years after their release.
This was a surprise announcement and underpinned the government's belief that 70 years is a fair length of term because it wishes to see the benefits go back to the performer.
This is a major victory for the music industry, which has been campaigning for years for a term extension only to be derailed by Gowers’ recommendations. Only two weeks ago, Fran Nevrkla and Dominic McGonigal of the collecting society Public Performance Ltd (PPL) were vowing to fight the long fight for rights on behalf of its member base of 38,000 performers. BPI’s Geoff Taylor praised the move to a fairer copyright term.
This is an interesting change since UK government thinking had been conditioned by “consumer rights and benefits” in its deliberations to date, but this recent announcement brings producer rights back to the fore. The government's previous stance had been increasingly at odds with the European Commission's Internal Market directorate's move to increase the term of protection to 95 years. These latter proposals are currently working their way through the EU law making process of Parliament and Council, and they have the support of many countries. (In the United States, the copyright term for sound recordings is 70 years after death of the author, or if it is a work of corporate authorship, the shorter of 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation.)
Whilst delivering to producers what they had long campaigned for, this latest move in the UK has at least three other effects:
This is the first rejection of any of the Gowers recommendations and may open the door for other changes. It’s well known that many practitioners have felt uneasy about more than one of the Gowers recommendations, so other changes may follow.
It is a tangible sign of EU countries finding deals to deliver a single market with which individual countries align – maybe more will follow in quick succession since country differences are bogged down in the lawmaking process
It would appear that this decision was taken without significant research into likely effects based on rigorous analysis, i.e. it was a deal rather than a logical development of policy.
Further challenges and opportunities will surely be created by this announcement after we move past the Christmas season into the new year.
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