I saw the following on the Reuters.co.uk website.

LONDON (Billboard) - Fifty years after it was first released in the United States, Elvis Presley's "That's All Right" is a hit in Britain. The single entered the British charts last week at No. 3. But for BMG, the company releasing the track, the celebration might be short-lived.

If there are no changes in European copyright law, the track will fall into the public domain on January 1, 2005. Anyone will be able to release it without paying royalties to the owners of the master or the performer's heirs. BMG will start losing a significant piece of its catalogue income in Europe.

As "That's All Right" is being hailed by some as the beginning of rock 'n' roll, the implications are that every year after 2005, more recordings that defined the genre will fall into public domain.

In the United States, BMG will continue to own the rights to the recording. Under the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, sound recordings are protected for 95 years from the day of recording in the United States -- for post-1976 recordings, coverage is the artist's life plus 70 years.

In most of the European Union, the duration is 50 years after the first release of a sound recording.

"I regard this week's anniversary as a wakeup call and a call to arms to step up a gear or two in our campaign to lobby for a similar term in the EU," said Peter Jamieson, executive chairman of British Phonograph Industry, in a recent speech. "The end of the sound recording copyright on the explosion of British popular music in the late '50s and '60s, not just the Beatles, but many other British artists, is only a short period away. If nothing is done they will suffer loss of income not just for their sales in the UK but their sales across the globe."

Many recordings from the '50s and the '60s will start falling into public domain in the coming years.

Bruce Welch is bass guitarist with the Shadows, originally the backing group for Cliff Richard. Richard's and the Shadows' copyrights will start to expire when they hit the 50-year mark in 2009. "It's scary," Welch said during a 37-date sold-out tour of the United Kingdom. "I only became aware of the situation last year ... Our stuff is still selling, and there's about 250 various compilation albums out there worldwide. I'd like the period extended as soon as possible, and 95 years sounds good to me."

The EU is reviewing its past directives on intellectual property, notably the EU Term of Protection directive. With this in mind, trade body the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry last year asked the European Commission for an extension of Term of Protection for producers and artists with the goal of ending the discrepancy between the United States and the EU.

I don’t quite know why it appals me so much that I feel the need to write about it but it does. It is pure greed on the part of the artists and the record companies. They already have fifty years to make money on what was a few days work in their youth and they still want more. In the real world you do a job, get paid for it and go off to do another job. End of story. In this fantasy world of popular music they make a record and want to keep getting paid for it time and time and time again. Fifty years isn’t long enough to rake in the cash for their three minute ditties. Oh no, they want the cash to continue rolling in long after they're dead. So much so that these rebels of yesteryear are going to the courts and the legislature and bleating about wanting the law changed to protect their bank accounts. Elvis is dead (yes he is) and is well past caring but people like Sonny Bono and Bruce Welch need to realise that they are perfectly welcome to make money off their music by performing it or re-recording it but changing the law for their own enrichment is immoral.

Over the coming years we will be seeing a lot more of these issues. America seems pretty much wrapped up and sorted since the big corporations have gained the decisions they want from the politicians they bought and paid for when high office was just an ambition with a large price tag. But the EU is a harder nut for them to crack. Yes, EU politicians are just as corrupt as American ones but they will still be harder to sell (and buy) on protecting the interests of trillionaire American companies. Companies who knew the law perfectly well when they made these films and records but now want it changing because they overestimated their ability to continue making things of the same longevity and quality. The answer to the situation is simple – if you remaster, re-edit or in some way improve a recording, film or TV programme then the copyright clock is already reset to zero. All Disney should have to do is produce a new version of, for example, Snow White. One that is better than other companies’ cash in editions. But they don’t want to be put in a position where they have to work for their money. They want to be protected by new laws because the old ones no longer fit their mission statement.

And if fifty years was upped to one hundred. What then? The same companies with different chairmen will be back wanting the law changed in the future to further extend their copyright. And this time they’ll have another precedent on their side. As well as another President. Though whether it will be Ashley or Mary-Kate I wouldn’t want to speculate. If fifty years isn’t long enough to squeeze money out of something then what makes a hundred years any different?

I am so sick of the music industry trying to paint itself as hard done by. Trying to claim they are always the victim. I agree that the current issue of downloading music damaging the record industry has merit. The issue of the rights and wrongs of downloading is a column for a different time but the scale of the problem is such that the industry is broadly speaking in the right. But the message they try to get across is delivered by multi millionaires crying about losing money appealing to teenagers who can barely afford the over priced CDs. Now the industry is preparing for another round of we’re-the-victims spin. Only this time it is different. This time they are opposing something that isn’t illegal. Will they win? Probably. If not now then in a few years time when the Beatles’ recordings come into the frame.

If musicians and the studios weren’t so greedy we would be standing on the verge of a historic time. When the public domain begins to add the works of twentieth century musical greats to the eighteenth and nineteenth century masters. When Elvis becomes as much public property as Shakespeare and Dickens. But Elvis has better lawyers than Bill or Chaz.

 

Postscript - Dave emailed me to say that Sonny Bono is in fact as dead as Elvis (yes he IS) and therefore his potential for new releases is rather limited. Short of someone "discovering" a batch of lost tapes, he won't be producing anything new. But since he started this whole sodding business in the first place he is still a git. And I absolutely refute claims that I thought he was the lead singer of U2...