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Industry and ministers meet for copyright extension update

By | Published on Thursday 2 April 2009

Culture Minister Andy Burnham, IP Minister David Lammy, civil servants from the UK Intellectual Property Office and reps from the music business met on Tuesday to discuss the copyright extension proposals which are currently working their way through the European Union legislative process as we speak, but which faltered last week, partly because of objections by Lammy’s team that the current proposals being considered, that would increase the current copyright term for recordings from 50 to as much as 95 years, favour record companies over artists and session musicians.

As previously reported, the UK disagreed with most other European countries about the session fund that would be established as part of the term extension, which would ensure more royalties go to artists after fifty years, oblivious of contractual arrangements between artists and labels. Current proposals would make the fund a temporary measure covering copyrights already in existence when the term extension becomes law – UK ministers want the fund to be a permanent thing, so artists always benefit when their copyrights pass the fifty-year point.

The Musicians’ Union, record label trade bodies BPI and AIM, and recording royalties body PPL all hit out at the UK for allowing the extension proposals to falter on the session fund issue, arguing the musicians they (or, rather, the MU and PPL) represent were happy with the fund proposals as they currently stood. The recently launched Featured Artists Coalition, though, has dissented from that industry view, saying they support the government in their bid to secure artists a better deal long term, even if it delays the recording copyright from being extended short term.

Reps from the BPI and AIM, plus a rep from the Music Managers Forum and FAC board member Billy Bragg, met with the political types on Tuesday to assess the government’s current position.

Certainly the UK’s insistence that the session fund be a permanent venture has postponed any extension in copyright term, so much so the proposals may well not make it through before this June’s European elections, leading to even more delays. But sources say that industry reps were told that UK ministers and civil servants are confident they can talk their European counterparts round on the issue of making the session fund permanent, and that they will then proceed with their push to move the extension proposals forward, albeit for the seventy year term Lammy says he supports (instead of the 95 years the industry wants).

In related news, and despite the various delays, that previously reported reception staged by UK recording royalty society PPL took place in Brussels yesterday, with MEPs and representatives of the European Commission, member state governments and the current EU Presidency, which is with the Czech Republic, in attendance alongside various musicians and music industry reps. The music contingent thanked the European Commission for originally bringing the term extension proposals to the table, and the European Parliament for passing them.

As for the Council Of Ministers, whose prelim COREPER meeting held up the proposals last week because of those aforementioned disagreements on the session fund, well they were made to sit in the corner with their faces to the wall, and told to think very hard about what they’d done.

Speaking at the event, PPL’s Director Of Government Relations Dominic McGonigal, said: “We are grateful to the European Commission and the European Parliament which have responded to the request from musicians for a fair copyright term. We now ask that the Council approves these proposals and so puts an end to second class status for performers in Europe. Musicians do not want to hear that this legislation has failed because of political wranglings over inconsequential technicalities”.



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