Bristol West MP joins the record companies

bristol | corporations | news report Monday May 14, 2007 20:57 by SteveL

early day motion on behalf of the man

The Liberal Democrat MP for Bristol West, Stephen Williams, has decided to join the side of the record companies in his signing of an early day motion "COPYRIGHT TERM FOR PRODUCERS AND PERFORMERS". In this motion, he and the other signatories ask the government to ignore all the work done by the recent Gowers report on intellectual property, and extend the copyright on audio recordings to 70 years after the death of the musicians, rather than a straightforward 50 years.

Audio recordings of music are only protected by copyright for 50 years. After that anyone can share them, remix them, do anything they want, without paying the artists -or their record companies- any money.

Needless to say, this concerns the record companies, who see all the music of the fifties and especially the sixties soon becoming unprotected. Within ten years, the early Rolling Stones, The Who and the Beatles will all become free, with no iTunes revenue going back to the record producers, and occasionally, the artists, or at least their agents.

Last year, the government conducted a review, the Gower Review of Intellectual Property, to look at the whole problem of copyright in the digital age. Unexpectedly, it came out fair and balanced, looking at the needs of consumers as well as the producers. Not only did it is say that the current 50 year extension did not need to be extended, it argued that any change should not be retroactive. The Who would not have recorded tracks with lyrics like "I hope I die before I get old" if they were worried that copyright for the soundtracks would not last over fifty years, so there is no need to feel sorry for them now.

But who is that taking up the baton of support for the poor, deprived record companies, who are finding their business so cruelly devastated by a world in which people only buy the singles they want, instead of whole albums of mediocrity? Yes, its our local Bristol West MP, Stephen Williams, the Liberal Democrat voted in as a protest against the Labour party's support of the Iraq war. He's one of the seventy signatories to an early day motion asking the government to extend copyright to seventy years plus life, and to spread that across the whole EU. The late Lonnie Donegan is cited as an example, if he had not died in 2002 he would be deprived of revenue from an old song this year. Being dead did not stop him adding his name to an advert in the December 7 2006 financial times, clearly his bond with his record company is stronger than even death can break.

Anyone in Mr Williams' constituency, anyone who feels that perhaps being granted the right to download music from a CD or record to an MP3 player ahead of the right of the musicians who recorded something fifty years ago, may wish to get in touch with the MP and share their opinions. The web site http://www.writetothem.com/ makes this process easy.