More term extension nonsense
Charlie McCreevy, the EU’s Internal Market Commissioner, has announced that he will push for the commission to extend the term of copyright afforded to musical performances from 50 to 95 years. This is even more fuckwitted than such proposals generally are, given that his own directorate says that term extension doesn’t make sense.
More locally, the Gowers Review also recommended against term extension. In fact, no one really thinks term extension is a good idea except Cliff Richard and his ilk, who should resume rolling in the piles of cash that they already have, and stop trying to rob the public domain.
To make clear his bulging fuckwittedness, I present his argument verbatim:
I have not seen a convincing reason why a composer of music should benefit from a term of copyright which extends to the composer’s life and 70 years beyond, while the performer should only enjoy 50 years, often not even covering his lifetime. It is the performer who gives life to the composition and while most of us have no idea who wrote our favourite song – we can usually name the performer.
This is classic argument from ignorance. He’d have to be blinkered or stupid not to notice the convincing reasons all about him, not to mention the ones produced by his own organisation. To claim that the term of protection for recordings should be ridiculously long merely because the term for literary works is also ridiculously long is asinine.
A petition has been set up to ask the prime minister to oppose any changes.
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