Copyright protection for sound recordings extended to 70 years

Copyright protection for sound recordings has been extended within the European Union by a further 20 years.

The decision by the council of the European Union to amend the EU Copyright Directive will allows musicians to continue to receive royalties for recordings they have made for 70 years instead of 50.

"Performers generally start their careers young and the current term of protection of 50 years often does not protect their performances for their entire lifetime. Therefore, some performers face an income gap at the end of their lifetimes.

"They are also often not able to rely on their rights to prevent or restrict objectionable uses of their performances that may occur during their lifetimes," a statement from the council said.

However, today's rubber stamping of the directive, which received a majority vote on 7 September at a meeting of the EU Council of Ministers' permanent representatives (Coreper), won't help some artists. For hits already out of copyright, or those for which protection is due to expire, such as the Beatles 1962 hit Love Me Do, the changes won't come in time. The amendment is not expected to be transposed into national laws until around 2014.

A representative for the music industry body, the BPI told us: "Our understanding of the change is that despite being voted in, it is not retrospective. Recordings that are out of copyright won't ‘pop' back into copyright."

Despite this, the news has been welcomed by the music industry as it puts the rights of singers and other musicians more on a par with that of song writers, whose estates enjoy copyright protection for their work for 70 years after their death.

Graham Slater, founder of independent music label Tabitha Music said that the decision by the council was a good thing.

"It is good for everyone. Artists should be allowed to earn from music they have produced early on in their careers. I expect that eventually the protection will be extended for a longer time," he told Computeractive.

Pat Hallin, a session musician said: "Over the past 60 years as a studio musician I have played for numerous artists ranging from the Beatles to John Williams, to name just two.

"On behalf of all my generation we are eternally grateful for all the hard work that has been done to ensure this much deserved victory for the ‘little guys' that help us benefit from the revision of the copyright laws."

But the Open Rights Group (ORG), which has run a long campaign against extending the protection for sound recordings, said the move was bad and would only benefit large record labels.

"Term extension is a cultural disaster. It means that it will be harder to publish older works, and many will remain out of print. Our research shows that around 80 per cent of the cash windfall from copyright levies will fall into the hands of record labels.

"Despite the rhetoric, small artists will gain very little from this, while our cultural heritage takes a massive blow by denying us full access to these recordings for another generation," warned Jim Killock, ORG executive director.

Mr Killock's view that extending the protection on sound recordings would not help was echoed in the Gowers review of Intellectual Property, published in 2006.

A review carried out in 2006 for the UK Government by Andrew Gowers, former editor of the Financial Times, dismissed the music industry’s call for this extension; he even said he had considered shortening the term.

The amendment is expected to take up to 18 months, sometime in 2014,  to be transposed into national laws.