International: Isn’t 50 years of copyright enough?
Elvis has left the building – time to free his works too.
The international recording industry is preparing to lobby the EU for changes to existing copyright law. But in an attempt to manipulate law for profit, we are being asked to place whole chunks of our culture into a commercial vacuum.
I wrote about this issue in the post titled Elvis: “That’s All Right” to end of copyright.
This is clearly a move motivated by money, no one cares about the other music of the fifties that has just entered the public domain in the UK such as ‘You Belong To My Heart’ by Jo Stafford. But when it’s copyright of Elvis that might expire then there must be something wrong with copyright law. This damn loophole must be closed that allows works only to have a limited copyright lifespan.
Yeah right, there is a reason why the creators of copyright law did so with a limitation on the length that each created work would have protection for. They realised that a balance had to be struck between what benefited the author and what benefited the public at large.
The issue is not about getting music for free i.e. with out a monetary cost but about freedom of music.
