David Emery Online

Us v them, over and over again

25 July 2007

Today the UK rejected the music copyright extension proposal, which has been pushed by music industry figureheads like the BPI for quite a while now.

I honestly don’t know how I feel about it.

My gut instinct is that this is a good thing. Copyright was always intended to be a transitory phase – a ‘gift’ from the government almost – to encourage innovation; the original thinking goes that people wouldn’t bother inventing or innovating if someone else could simply copy them straight away. Giving a 50 year grace period where the inventor has the right to prevent other people copying them seemed like the best way to do it.

Similarly, for music the argument goes that if people couldn’t make money from their music – which (supposedly) necessitates copyright – they either would bother or wouldn’t be able to. Of course, it’s plain to see that this is a rather timely discussion considering the current state of the industry with regards to file sharing and the decline in record sales.

The main thrust of the anti-copyright extension side of the fence is that after 50 years an artist will have earned as much money as they really ever need to from it. Certainly the concept of encouraging people to make music by allowing the exclusive rights to it isn’t harmed by having those rights disappear after 50 years; I can’t really see a band sitting round in a recording studio going ‘Actually, just bin that last track – we’ll loose the rights to it in 50 years anyway, it’s probably not worth the hassle’. Obviously it has a large social benefit as well, with the songs going into the public domain for the benefit of society as a whole, leaving us in the same situation we have with classical music.

The problem comes, of course, when you look at it from an artists point of view. Now, I’m no Cliff fan but you can really sympathise with him when his first hits start going out of copyright next year. Things he worked hard on back in the day are being taken from his hands, and there’s nothing he an do about it. If I was him, I’d be pretty pissed off about it.

Which viewpoint is right is something I just don’t know – they both have compelling arguments either way; it’s a classic example of society versus the individual. In this case, though, it appears the individual has won.