For years the recording industry in Europe and especially in Great Britain has been pushing for an extension of copyright protection for performing artists. Last year these plans arrived on the EU stage with Charlie McCreevy, the EU Commissioner for Internal Market and Services, introducing a term extension directive that will be voted on sometime this year, possibly as early as February.
Most music industry trade organisations have welcomed McCreevy’s plans that tries to be balanced in extending the protection term from 50 to 95 years while including a “lose it or use it” provision that would pass copyrights back to the musicians if the labels don’t publish their work, and a fund for session musicians. But not all interested parties are seeing the balance in the EU’s plans. While McCreevy claims that under his directive session musicians would benefit considerably the Open Rights Group says that some 80 percent of recording artists would only receive between €0.50 and €26 each year if the proposal becomes law.
McCreevy, however, is positive that the new proposal would allow performing artists to make a claim for remuneration based on sales, giving them an average yearly payment of €2,000. “Opponents to the extension argue that an additional annual income of around €2,000 per year for session players is not significant enough to allow performers to participate fairly in the millions that the proposal would provide for record companies,” McCreevy recently said. “Well, to that criticism I can say that the average annual pay-out might not appear significant to academic critics but €2,000 extra per year is significant for an average session player.”
But most study groups and economic experts have concluded that a term extension would give little benefit to artists and a lot to major media and record companies who could continue to market their catalogs. Most prominently, Andrew Gowers, the man who held a far-reaching investigation into copyright reform for the British government, called the proposals “out of touch with reality” and Prof. Bernt Hugenholtz at the University of Amsterdam, who advises the EU on copyright matters, called McCreevy’s directive a “deliberate attempt to mislead Europe’s Parliament”.
Add to that Martin Kretschmer, a professor at the University of Bournemouth, who said that the market penetration of the four largest music labels is so vast “there are almost no significant recordings reaching back more than 50 years which are controlled by other companies.” More than 70 percent of the revenues resulting from a copyright extension would go to the record labels, he added. As lengthening their exclusivity over pieces of music would enable them to charge higher retail prices, they could reap extra profits of between €44 million and €843 million per year. Notably, the only study supporting an extension came from UK label body BPI.
The Open Rights Group doesn’t want to let this proposal pass by the Commission and the European Parliament. That’s why they produced a little clip to inform MEPs on the background:
Becky Hogge, director of the Open Rights Group, accuses McCreevy of concocting a “fairy tale” with the story of the “poor performer who has played on a track in the 1960s and has collected royalties for 50 years. We are told that [without extension] he will lose the main source of income at the very time he needs it most. This looks simple enough for MEPs to give it a happy ending.” However, Hogge adds, “all the evidence shows that the term extension directive will do very little and almost nothing to help the poor performer and everything to line the pockets of the world’s record labels.”
The directive will be discussed at a meeting of the EU Parliament’s legal affairs committee, scheduled for February 11 & 12.
What do you think? Should Europe introduce a term extension? Who would benefit from it most? And why would that be a good/bad thing? Drop me a line in the comments.
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