Ah, some good news for the recording industry on all things copyright. While the government commissioned Gowers Report into intellectual property laws failed to be convinced by the argument that the copyright on recordings should last more than the current fifty years, the House Of Commons Culture, Media & Sport Committee has recommended that the copyright term be extended.
As previously reported, the record industry has been busy pushing for an increase in the recorded music copyright, pointing out the discrepancies between the recording copyright term and that for music publishing (life plus 70 years), and also between the European recording copyright term and that in the US (which is now 95 years). The need to extend the 50 year term is becoming increasingly pressing because many of the legendary rock n roll recordings of the late fifties and early sixties will come out of copyright in the near future.
The Culture Committee has dealt with the issue in a document published today called 'New Media & The Creative Industries', and they report that: "We have not heard a convincing reason why a composer and his or her heirs should benefit from a term of copyright which extends for lifetime and beyond, but a performer should not". They suggest that the term should be "extended to at least 70 years, to provide reasonable certainty that an artist will be able to derive benefit from a recording throughout his or her lifetime".
Observing that its findings were in contradiction to those of the Gowers' Report, the Culture Committee said it felt that review had "failed to take account of the moral right of creators to choose to retain ownership and control of their own intellectual property".
Needless to say, all sorts of record industry bodies have been welcoming the Committee's findings. Fran Nevrkla of UK record royalties collecting society PPL told CMU: "The Select Committee has conducted a thorough and rigorous investigation and should be commended for the quality of their report. They have recommended extending copyright term for performers and producers to bring them in line with other creators. Calls to extend copyright term have now been backed by 75 MPs across the political parties and when the Government responds to the Select Committee we hope they will show their support for musicians and the record industry".
Meanwhile BPI top man Geoff Taylor was on the phone first thing telling us: "The Committee's report understands and supports the role of copyright as the means by which creators earn a living and drive the creative economy. The Committee is quite right that the term of copyright should be extended as a matter of fairness to artists - there is indeed no convincing argument why recording artists have shorter copyright protection than other creators. We agree with the Committee that the Gowers Review focused too heavily on economic analysis and did not sufficiently consider this fundamental point. We urge the Government to respond positively to the Select Committee and now make the case in Europe for fair copyright protection for British performers and record companies".
And that IFPI bloke John Kennedy had a few things to say about the matter. Well, one thing really, that the committee had "given a ringing endorsement for fair treatment of the UK music industry".
So there you go. All lovely. The copyright term issue was just one of many covered by the Culture Committee's report that also considered what new measures could be introduced to further combat online content piracy - in particular what role internet service providers and search engines could and should have in that (something which should also please record label types, who have long said ISPs should take on more responsibility for stopping the illegal distribution of copyright content online).