In an interview with Music Week, the government's minister for all things vaguely cultural, Andy Burnham, has said he considers the issue of the sound recording copyright term to still be up for debate, despite the government previously saying it agreed with the conclusion of the Gowers Report on the matter - ie that the current fifty year term was adequate.
As previously reported at rather great length, the record industry wants the sound recording copyright term extended, [a] to bring it more in line with the US term (95 years) and the music publishing term (life plus 70 years) and [b] to stop all those valuable pop recordings of the early sixties from coming out of copyright in the next five years. Despite some support in political circles for that extension, the Gordon Brown commissioned Gowers Review of copyright laws said the current term should remain, and the government initially said it backed that finding.
However, in the Music Week interview Burnham says he is now willing to have "another dialogue" on the issue. He admits that the change in heart is in part down to comments made by the European Union's Internal Market Commissioner, Charlie McCreevy, who recently called for an extension to 95 years across Europe. Moves to extend the term at a European level would force the government to reconsider its position. Burnham said McCreevy's comments had "kicked off an important debate that we now have to have within government".
As also previously reported, MP and former Runrigger Peter Wishart is putting a Private Members Bill through parliament that proposes increasing the term to seventy years, and he claims that he has cross-party support for the proposal.