MMF and FAC call for more action on term extension

The Music Managers Forum (MMF)  and the Featured Artists Coalition (FAC) have called for an artist-centric approach to copyright term extension when it's implementation is considered in the United Kingdom. The two trade bodies, representing managers and artists respectively, said that while labels will benefit hugely from the upcoming extension of the sound recording copyright term from 50 to 70 years, and session musicians will receive tangible benefits too, the longer copyright term offers a "mixed bag" to featured artists, many of whom are in long term contractual relationships paying poor royalties - and are sometimes unrecouped despite significant sales. The  MMF and FAC had hoped that when the UK Intellectual Property Office considered requirements in the European Directive for some artist-centric rules to be included as part of term extension, they might propose giving artists the right to renegotiate record contracts at 50 years. That is not part of the IPO's current consultation on term extension, though a 'use it or lose it' clause and 'clean slate' provision are, both of which MMF/FAC welcomed. Though they also called for a standard minimum artist royalty to be introduced at the 50 year point.

Term extension approved by EU

The European Union's Council Of Ministers has approved proposals to extend the copyright term for sound recordings from the current 50 years up to 70 years, giving backing for an EU directive extending the sound recording copyright term which must be implemented by menber states within 2 years.

Copyright reforms back on the agenda in Europe

As Amazon continue to insist that its ‘cloud’ based music service needs no licences from either music publishers or record labels, better news for rights owners from the 1709 Copyright Blog who report that ‘term extension’ is back on the EU’s Agenda. Term extension for sound recordings means extending the current EU wide term of copyright protection from the current 50 years to anything from 70 years to even 95 years (mirroring the USA) - something the record labels have long lobbied for and something it seems that the current presidency of the EU, Hungary, is pressing for. In other news it seems that the Dutch Government is also looking at revising its copyright laws to fit in with the digital age. At the moment the Dutch apply a levy to blank CDs and DVDs – to compensate rights owners for downloading and copying – which isn’t illegal in Holland under the private copy clause of the country's fair use provisions - although uploading is illegal. Under new proposals from the government downloading would also become illegal - meaning anyone who downloads music could be liable for copyright infringement actions. The new proposals are supported by the country's anti-piracy group BREIN, who say that if the law is changed they will not go after individual downloader's, preferring to target those who run the websites that enable file-sharing instead.

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