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Some thoughts on the EU Copyright Term Extension

Posted by Kelvin on Sep 16, 2011 at 14:10

Last week the European Union passed legislation that will extend the copyright protection for performing artists from 50 to 70 years. Also known as the ‘Cliff Richard’ law, the adoption has taken over two years with plenty of strife.

The idea behind the law was to give European Artists the same level of protection as their counterparts in the rest of the world and ensure that older artists and session musicians , who after making music in their early twenties, and now passing the 50 years term would not be deprived of their pension.

That’s all fine! After all, we all need to ensure that our productive or working life can help sustain in our twilight years. But one can’t help wondering whether there is more to it than just securing a deserved pension for ageing artists.

· The law narrows the gap between the copyright term of protection for authors (currently life plus 70 years after the authors' death) and the term of protection for performers (currently 50 years after the performance),

· It creates a mandatory fund for session musician (that is paid into by record companies), that will ensure that performers who are forced to sell their rights against a one-off flat fee obtain additional payments during the extended term

· if record producers fail to market a recording, performers can of get their rights back and market it themselves ('use it or lose it' provision).

· Finally, record producers would be prevented from making deductions to the royalties they pay to featured performers after the initial 50 years are over (a 'clean slate').

It seems that a lot of thought has been given to ensure that the benefits of this extension do not just end up in the pockets of the companies that - in most cases - own the copyrights and that were the essential driving force behind this extension in the first place as it ensures them another 20 years of income on back catalogue music .

Let’s take a step out of the ivory tower and see what all this means in the real world.

· Historically, session musicians, were paid a one off fee, so often, there are no official records on who should be payed. The fund is a great idea – but questions remain on how this money will be practically be redistributed and on basis of which data? The law states that money collected from airplay, bars and clubs will be the main income of this fund, but without proper technology to pinpoint usage and the lack of transparent accounting methods , this too will prove that tens of thousands small artists are being used as a human shield to protect the vested interest of the big companies and big token artists holding the legal power to retract large amounts of collected money at their will. This leaves the artists and session musicians, who this law is supposed to be all about, in the cold.

· The "use it or lose it "provision, although very important for musicians that would want to retract their music , will prove to be quite a different thing in practice. Imagine that 75 year old session musicians and authors will have to get together (probably after loosing touch for more than 40 years ) to align their opinions to mutually request that they would like to retract the rights to their song " because the producer fails to market it". The Producer will ensure the geezers on arrival that " they are in the process of re-marketing their product and will soon be rereleasing it , thus wavering the use it or loose it provision, and in the event that - say after two years - nothing happens, which by now 77 year -old- not- so-wealthy- musician will probably not have the energy or resources to legally fight the big companies over peanuts?

Another issue to consider is that by giving the industry an additional twenty years lock tight run on the back catalogue, there may be a huge opportunity missed to rearrange, remix, and resample old songs from their basic form into a new style song, robbing the world of potential great new songs.

A good example of this is the humongous success top artist/producer Moby gained with his album "18 " full of hit singles built around samples taken from Afro American Negro spirituals who were copyright free !

i.e."in this world"where the samples can be heard as lead vocal tracks

We fear that, without a proper technological system pinpointing usage and without an extensive database assigning all the rights transparently to the rightful owners, this directive could prove to be counter productive for those it was intended to help.

» Read on

Do you think the term extension will be a good thing for those it is intended for: the small musicians
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