BBC: “Musical copyright terms ‘to stay’”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6186436.stm :
Sir Cliff Richard appears set to lose a battle to extend the number of years that musicians can receive royalties for their records, the BBC has learned.
He wants copyright to last 95 years, rather than the present 50 years.
But an independent review is to recommend the terms are not extended, a well-placed government source has said.
This outcome would mean the report had “missed a great opportunity” to support the music industry, the chairman of the British Phonographic Industry claimed.
January 14th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
Thanks for posting this last article, Paul.
It will be interesting to see how different countries deal with copyright issues — and especially how they deal with issues of how long creators can receive royalty payments from their copyrights.
Through copyright protection, governments seek to incentivize creators, but governments do not want to create more incentives than necessary. Such over-incentivization might hinder creation and innovation. It is terribly difficult, however, for a government to decide how much incentive is too much.
How much incentive is an appropriate amount? We will never know for sure. But we can learn — perhaps a great deal — from analyzing the effects that different copyright schemes have had. That is, we can learn from other countries. How have their schemes worked? What were their effects on creators, artists, businesses?
Just as different states provide “laboratories for experiments” in the United States, different countries can provide “laboratories for experiments” throughout the world. Let’s keep our eyes on the UK.
February 16th, 2007 at 11:32 am
Friendster is NOT better than MySpace.