Select Committee Backs Extension Of Copyright Term

by Robin Pilgrim, LawAndTax-News.com, London

18 May 2007

In a report published on Wednesday, the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee recommended that the current copyright term for sound recordings of 50 years should be extended to 70 years.

This contradicts the findings of last year's Gowers review of the UK's intellectual property regime, which suggested that the economic benefit to performers of such an extension would be minimal.

However, the Culture, Media and Sport Committee argued that:

"Copyright term for sound recordings should be extended to at least 70 years, to provide reasonable certainty that an artist will be able to derive benefit from a recording throughout his or her lifetime."

It continued:

“We have not heard a convincing reason why a composer and his or her heirs should benefit from a term of copyright which extends for lifetime and beyond, but a performer should not”.

The Select Committee went on to suggest that the rejection of an extension to copyright term by Andrew Gowers in his Review of Intellectual Property, published in December 2006, failed to take account of the moral right of creators to choose to retain ownership and control of their own intellectual property, and instead examined the matter from a purely economic standpoint.

The Committee additionally called for new measures to help tackle piracy, setting out in statute deterrent levels of damages available in cases where copyright has been infringed, and making it illegal to camcord a film being shown in a cinema.

The Committee also concluded that the present statutory exemptions from infringement of copyright are not providing clarity or confidence for users or for the creative industries, particularly in relation to home copying, and it recommended that the Government should draw up a new exemption permitting copying within domestic premises for domestic use (including portable devices such as MP3 players, and vehicles owned or used regularly by the household) but not onward transmission of copied material.

Noting the role of the internet and of social networking websites in distributing unlicensed creative material, the Committee called upon internet service providers and internet search-based businesses to do more to discourage piracy, and to take more responsibility for dealing with unlicensed material, for instance by establishing a proactive body to examine claims that unlicensed material is being made available.

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