13 February 2009

UK Sticks with 70 Years for Music Copyright

Cold comfort, but the UK government is being more sensible than most others on the sound copyright extension:

David Lammy, the U.K. minister of state for intellectual property, has reaffirmed the British government's position on term extension by refusing to accept the European Parliament's legal affairs committee ruling on a 95-year copyright term for music recordings.

...


In a statement, Lammy effectively reiterated that support for a 70-year term for music recordings. The European ruling will ultimately be voted on by the Council of Ministers, in which Germany and France are supporters of the 95-year term.

So a certain amount of kudos is due. But not much.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks like the beatles are safe until death, which is half so far.

Glyn Moody said...

Indeed. But what about the rest of us?

Anonymous said...

Thanks for blogging on copyright term extension. We have now uploaded the speech given by Becky Hogge, outgoing Executive Director of the Open Rights Group, at our conference in the European Parliament last month:

http://www.openrightsgroup.org/2009/02/25/leading-academics-hit-out-as-government-abandons-evidence-based-policy-on-copyright/

http://www.openrightsgroup.org/2009/02/06/sound-copyright-conference-attacks-the-fairy-tale-of-copyright-term-extension/

If you like it please consider blogging the video and spreading the word!

Many thanks

Open Rights Group