Vox Polis

God botherer and tennis fan Sir Cliff Richard has given his support to a campaign for longer royalties for performers in the UK. Currently performers receive royalty payments for 50 years from the date of the recording of the work. Sir Cliff is asking for the royalty period for performers to be brought into line with that of songwriters who receive royalties their lifetime plus 70 years.

Frankly, I barely know where to start with how bad an idea it is. First off, to get an idea of who would really benefit from extended copyright (holding copyright is the legal tool that allows performers to collect royalties on a work so that’s what we’re really talking about) the British Phonographic Industry are leading this campaign. Not a coalition of aging artists struggling to make a crust but the recording industry (this Mail on Sunday article provides a nice glimpse into how much Cliff needs his next royalty cheque). It is the major music labels that really stand to gain from longer copyrights. A key trigger for this wave of campaigning is the impending end of copyright on some of the Beatles early recordings. ‘Love Me Do’ was recorded in 1962 and will enter the public domain in 2012. It goes without saying that the Beatles’ back catalogue is a major money-spinner and also that none of the artists involved are in any need of money.

The industry’s argument for longer copyright is that they need to have a guaranteed revenue stream before they’re willing to risk money on new artists but this doesn’t stand up to a lot of scrutiny.  The prevailing trend in music promotion and distribution is toward the internet - an arena with very low operating costs compared to TV, radio and print.  The Arctic Monkeys (whatever you may think of their musical merits) have shown that a cheap grass roots campaign can be very effective in launching new artists.  So, given that the industry are going to need less money in the future to promote new artists it’s not an unreasonable jump to suggest that in fact extended copyright only furthers to serve the purpose of further lining the pockets the biggest labels with money from the re-re-release of classic material.

The result of these legally protected revenue streams is stagnation, the labels have no economic push to seek out new music which makes life very difficult for new artists to reach a wide audience.  The entrenched positions of the major labels also allows them to dictate policy on matters such as DRM.  In light of this my suggestion for the future of copyright (both for composers and performers) is to significantly reduce copyright length.  5 years for recordings and 10 years for compositions seems reasonable.  Short copyright means that artists who have a create a popular work are able to make some money off it without being rest on their laurels indefinitely.  If someone wants to keep making money from music then they have to keep working at it, which if you think about feels genuinely fair.  Shorter copyright also generates material for samplists and remixers without the current legal minefield.  Finally, archivists can work freely without having to worry that their attempts to preserve culture are going to wind up breaching the DMCA, EUCD or [insert draconian anti-copying law here].

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 18th, 2006 at 12:51 pm and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.