EU extends copyright term of sound recordings to 70 years

Discussions relating to performance, interpretation, score preparation, musica ficta etc.
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carlos
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EU extends copyright term of sound recordings to 70 years

Post by carlos »

"The European Union has extended the term of copyright protection offered to sound recordings from 50 to 70 years, following a prolonged campaign from the music industry. The legislation, which was first proposed by the European Commission in 2008 and voted on by the European Parliament in April 2009, was passed today (Sept. 12) by the EU Council of Ministers in Brussels. The new regulations will be implemented by EU Member State Governments within the next two years."

Complete news:
http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/industry ... 8552.story
choralia
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Re: EU extends copyright term of sound recordings to 70 year

Post by choralia »

Reliability of news on this subject sounds quite poor:
Chief among the artists to benefit is the Beatles: The band's first single, "Love Me Do," was released in October of 1962.
There is an evident misconception in confusing performance copyright with respect to composer's copyright.

Anyway, this subject was anticipated on the IMSLP forums a couple of days ago:

http://imslpforums.org/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=5327
The EU has retroactively extended the copyright term for sound recordings. I don't know if any sound recordings from the 50's and 40's have been uploaded to the EU servers, but they will have to go down as they are now illegal. I think this is quite a blow for the public domain. Let's see what happens :(
I replied:
Apparently this proposal was under discussion since some years, with a 95 year term initially, and possibly to be applied retroactively only to recordings that are not in the public domain already. Let's wait and see the officially approved text. Then there might be some time before it becomes effective in The Netherlands, where the EU server is currently located.
I expect that, when effective, the new law will not affect recordings that are public domain in EU already, so the IMSLP-EU server will be able to legally host any recordings made until the beginning of the 60s. I hope that the official text will be available soon, so as to confirm my expectation.

Max
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