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The copyright duration for sound recordings is set to increase after the Legal Affairs committee of the European Parliament backed an extension to the current 50 year protection, proposing an almost double protection term of 95 years.
Currently, song writers and their estate benefit from royalties for their lifetime plus 70 years. However, sound recordings from performers such as Cliff Richard and the Beatles who relied on song writers for some of their hits, are on the verge of dropping out of copyright.
The British parliament has previously disagreed with extending the duration of copyright, based on a 2006 review by Alan Gowers. However, the current culture secretary Andy Burnham, is in support for extension saying that “there is a moral case for performers benefiting from their work throughout their entire lifetime. An extension to match more closely a performer’s expected lifetime, perhaps something like 70 years”
There is expected to be some debate as to the final duration agreed before it becomes law, with the UK and other EU member states proposing a term of 70 years.
A number of musicians and societies have campaigned for an increase in the duration of copyright term. The Robert Farnon society submits that extending the term to 95 years would achieve parity with other countries such as the USA and would mean that composers and performers would have deserved equal protection with the performance itself being a ‘work of art’. It is also argued that extension would increase the supply of new music, benefiting consumers.
Alan Story, senior lecturer in Intellectual Property law at the University of Kent and Chairperson of the CopySouth Research Group, commented on the proposed extension: “Europe should follow the example of the United States and give proper names to bills that such create statutory changes. In the US, the term of copyright was extended in the late 1990s by the ‘Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act’. Why doesn’t the European Parliament call its own term extension in sound recordings the ‘Bertelsmann Bonus Bill’…and then we would finally have a bit of truth telling as to who this new proposed legislation seeks to benefit”.
Alan went on to submit that, “bankers are getting bonuses, why not us too?, the multinational music companies are demanding.”
Sources: Times Online, Robert Farnon Society
Photo: Ratnesh
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I was sitting listening to a recent remastering of Miles Davis’ classic 1959 album Kind Of Blue a couple of days ago and thinking how poor the piano had always sounded in a number of tracks. The idea that one might improve what is regarded by some as perhaps the greatest jazz record ever made has always seemed a little ridiculous, but the more I listened the more annoyed I got at that “cardboard” piano sound, and the more curious I became as to what might be achieved in an XR-style remastering of the album – just for my own enjoyment, of course.
So I pulled the Sony/Columbia ‘remastered’ audio into my computer and investigated. I was immediately pretty horrified to find hard digital compression squashing so many of the tracks – every sax solo you hear coming out of the right hand speaker on tracks 1, 2 and 4 has had about 6dB of life removed from it by digital hard limiting in order to make the whole album sound ‘louder’. It’s the kind of thing that’s rife in the rock and pop world, but surely totally inappropriate here. Fortunately it can be reasonably well ‘undone’ given the right audio tools (unlike some kinds of compression) and the original dynamics can be restored.
Then I looked at the frequency response that caused that ‘cardboard piano’ sound that annoyed me so much. I figured that if I could get the piano sounding like a piano, that might have a positive effect on the other instruments too. And boy, was I right! There were dips and frequency ‘holes’ galore, whether comparing this to more recent recordings of similar ensembles, or even to other Miles recordings of the late 50s. Adjust the sonic profile of Kind of Blue so that it more closely resembles the likes of ‘Round About Midnight and the sound is transformed – if you switch between the ‘before’ and ‘after’ and you’ll wonder how the ‘before’ ever spent 50 years hailed as one of the greatest recordings ever. By comparison it sounds horrible – the bass is anaemic, the cymbals dead, the saxophones thin and the piano, well, cardboard. About the only sound that remains the same is Miles Davis’ muted trumpet work – even his open trumpet is more beautifully rounded. (I also fixed a minor tape drop-out or two…)
So why this long introduction to this week’s newsletter? Well in the last month or so we’ve been hearing about plans for the EU to change copyright law here. If these plans, currently passing through the European parliament with some degree of success, go through this year, then my prediction is that you’ll never hear what I’m listening to as I type this. Nor will you hear any of the many classical recordings from 1959 which await my attention in 2010, when under current legislation they enter into the public domain. (Trying to determine and negotiate rights on 50-year-old orchestral broadcasts where the estate of each performer potentially has a stake is simply not an option, either financially or logistically.)
Most of those obscure and forgotten orchestral recordings the major record companies who are starkly opposed to changes in copyright really don’t care much about (they know as I do that there’s not really any money in them, and only the likes of you and I are really interested in them, and we’re not even tiny blips on their accountants’ radars). They’ve either never been issued or they’ve been out of print for decades – and if the law changes to make copyright last 70 years rather than 50, they’ll have another 20 years gathering dust and I’ll be contemplating my retirement. Of the recordings they do want to hold onto – and yes, Sony has just been celebrating the 50th anniversary of Kind of Blue with another reissue, a $110-a-copy luxury collector’s edition box set with bonus DVD etc. etc. – what seems to be more important is milking the product for a few dollars more than dealing with some of the basic – and fixable – shortcomings of the recording itself, as described above. I’m sure a Pristine release of an XR-remastered Kind of Blue would not make much of a dent in Sony’s global empire, but if their intensive lobbying succeeds it’s a release that will never happen, and we’ll have another two decades of sub-standard product to buy over and over as we await the next bout of lobbying in 20 years’ time to extend EU copyright from 70 to 90 years…
John Duffy, PADA contributor to:
Pristine Classical.com
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