The rock dinosaurs of the 1960s are in line for a spectacular windfall after the EU announced plans yesterday to extend musicians' entitlement to retrospective royalties from 50 to 95 years. Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Cliff Richard and Roger Daltrey have all campaigned for what the record industry calls "the Beatles extension", which will guarantee most artists royalties covering their entire careers. The first Beatles recordings will come out of copyright in 2012 and EMI, which owns them, has been a leading campaigner for the change in legislation. Sir Cliff, 67, sees his first hit go out of copyright this year but under the EU proposal he would not lose a penny before his 113th birthday. Daltrey, lead singer of The Who, has said that thousands of musicians have no pensions and rely on royalties in their old age. For many campaigners, however, the extra income is probably not essential for paying the winter heating bills. Yoko Ono and Barry Gibb were among 4,500 who took out a newspaper advertisement in 2006 calling for 95-year copyright control.
The rock dinosaurs of the 1960s are in line for a spectacular windfall after the EU announced plans yesterday to extend musicians' entitlement to retrospective royalties from 50 to 95 years.
Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Cliff Richard and Roger Daltrey have all campaigned for what the record industry calls "the Beatles extension", which will guarantee most artists royalties covering their entire careers.
The first Beatles recordings will come out of copyright in 2012 and EMI, which owns them, has been a leading campaigner for the change in legislation. Sir Cliff, 67, sees his first hit go out of copyright this year but under the EU proposal he would not lose a penny before his 113th birthday.
Daltrey, lead singer of The Who, has said that thousands of musicians have no pensions and rely on royalties in their old age. For many campaigners, however, the extra income is probably not essential for paying the winter heating bills. Yoko Ono and Barry Gibb were among 4,500 who took out a newspaper advertisement in 2006 calling for 95-year copyright control.
It's only part of the story WRT music copyrights. These are the sound recording rights, signified by the (P) mark.
At the same time there's the traditional (C) copyrights in the song itself, and these, as usual, don't run out until death+70. So Cliff isn't suddenly going to starve when his (P) sound recording rights expire. Not that that's a compelling argument anyway, since Cliff has as much opportunity to invest in a pension as anyone else.
"Bringing sound recording rights into line with copyrights" is totally disingenuous, since creation+95 is just as different from death+70 as creation+50 was. If it were about making the licensing maze simpler, we could have just gone with something easy like creation+100 for both and at least we'd know where we stood.
No, the reason for this proposal is to please the music industry lobby, primarily the Big Four record labels that own the majority of the rights. They knew when they were paying to have the recordings created that they would have 50 years to profit as rightsholders; this is the contract between the creator and the public that copyright enshrines, to promote the creation of works that will eventually end up in the public domain. Instead the public domain will be cheated out of the music it was promised when that contract was made 50 years ago. Not just the tiny proportion of the music of 1958 that is still commercially viable today, but all of it - and that leaves the public much poorer.
So change the terms of copyrights if you like, but a retroactive increase in copyright is a gift from the public to the music industry from which we receive no benefit, and should be opposed.
Surely the Guantanamo detention facility is his best memorial, to be renamed the Richard Cheney FunLand Interrogation Centre. keep to the Fen Causeway
The net result of all of this, it seems, will be the status quo. The best we can hope for is that perhaps we will stop torturing; upon anything even approaching that, we will be expected to celebrate it as a victory, since even "stop torturing potentially innocent humans" is at this point a controversial premise. We will perhaps stop politicizing fragments of government that should never have been politicized, and the result will be to dilute the existing corruption, letting the poisoned buffoonery and incompetent hackery slowly work its way through the system for the next decade. Perhaps we shall stop abusing the very foundations of science and government, the premise that facts dictate conclusions, and not the other way around. If we are successful, if all goes well in November, that is. All we can reasonably hope for is that incompetence is diminished, and criminal acts are reduced, and more facts will out. Hoping for anything more is, at best, foolish. There will be reconciliation, and reconciliation will be defined by the conservative punditry as letting bygones be bygones...... The Blue Dogs will assert that their own particular brand of electorally premised cowardice is in fact the most noble path.... I think we are supposed to celebrate our prospects, right about now, but it seems empty. Most people saw the revision of FISA as a secondary issue; myself, I saw it as nothing less than symbol of new Democratic government. Most people have been reduced to laughing at the unending stream of sternly worded letters,........................; for myself, it seems not even worth satirization. We are locked in a cycle of sternly enforced futility, and told we are preposterous if we expect anything more.
There will be reconciliation, and reconciliation will be defined by the conservative punditry as letting bygones be bygones......
The Blue Dogs will assert that their own particular brand of electorally premised cowardice is in fact the most noble path....
I think we are supposed to celebrate our prospects, right about now, but it seems empty. Most people saw the revision of FISA as a secondary issue; myself, I saw it as nothing less than symbol of new Democratic government. Most people have been reduced to laughing at the unending stream of sternly worded letters,........................; for myself, it seems not even worth satirization. We are locked in a cycle of sternly enforced futility, and told we are preposterous if we expect anything more.
sorry you landed here Hunter. I salve my despair with beer, you could do worse. keep to the Fen Causeway
