Copywrong

The Open Rights Group has a great story about an eminent intellectual monopoly academic giving the lie to the current European Commission proposals to *extend* the copyright term granted to sound recordings, when all the evidence suggests they should be *reduced*:

When the European Commission put forward their proposal to retrospectively extend the copyright term granted to sound recordings, locking away vast swathes of our cultural heritage in a commercial vacuum for 45 years, it was clear that they had rejected all the expert evidence in favour of voodoo economics.

Now Professor Bernt Hugenholtz has written a letter to Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso asking why. Huggenholtz, Director of the Institute for Information Law (IViR), which was tasked by the European Commission to look into the arguments for and against extending copyright term, says his team were “surprised” to discover that their studies had been completely ignored, and that statements the Commission have made that “there was no need for external expertise” in drafting the proposal were “patently untrue”.

Love the voodoo economics bit.