(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)

On 14 February 2008, EU Internal Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy announced his intention to propose to the European Commission (EC), in the next several months, an extension of the copyright term for performers from 50 to 95 years. This proposal should be ready for adoption by the Commission before the summer break of 2008.

As a justification to his action, Commissioner McCreevy stated: "I strongly believe that copyright protection for Europe's performers represents a moral right to control the use of their work and earn a living from their performances. I have not seen a convincing reason why a composer of music should benefit from a term of copyright which extends to the composer's life and 70 years beyond, while the performer should only enjoy 50 years, often not even covering his lifetime It is the performer who gives life to the composition and while most of us have no idea who wrote our favourite song - we can usually name the performer."

The Commissioner also believes the extension would have no negative impact upon the consumer prices as studies show that the price of sound recordings that are out of copyright is not necessarily lower than the ones under copyright and no negative impact upon Europe's external trade balance as most of the additional revenues collected during the extended term would remain in Europe for European performers.

The same proposal was made in UK in May 2007 as a result of the lobby made by some artists such as Cliff Richard and Roger Daltry (from the Who) to the UK Government. However, in July 2007, the UK Government took the decision to reject the proposal.

The Recast study of the Dutch Institute for Information Law, commissioned by the European Commission and issued in November 2007, dealt with the topic and its conclusions were unfavourable to an extension of the copyright term for performers.

"Overall one can say that a term extension would indeed benefit those performing artists that are still popular after 50 years and still receive payments from collecting societies and/or participate in the revenues from the sales of their recordings - providing they have not signed away their rights against a single fee (...) the share of recordings that are still commercially valuable after 50 years makes up for only a small part of the overall repertoire. Benefits from a term extension would therefore only accrue to a limited share of performing artists. For the larger part of performers that do not derive substantial revenues after 50 years, a term extension could -depending on the contractual setting- prevent their recordings from either being commercially exploited by a secondary party or by themselves; or from becoming accessible to the general public" reads the report.

The report concludes that: "The authors of this study are not convinced by the arguments made in favour of a term extension. The term of protection currently laid down in the Term Directive (50 years from fixation or other triggering event) is already well above the minimum standard of the Rome Convention (20 years), and substantially longer than the terms that previously existed in many Member States. (...) Perceived from an international perspective the American terms are anomalous and cannot serve as a legal justification for extending the terms of related rights in the EU."

In August 2007, the EDRi-member Open Rights Group also published a very strong opinion against the extension of the copyright term explaining that the extension of the term would "discourage innovation, stunt the reissues market, and irrevocably damage future artists' and the general public's access to their cultural heritage". In the Group's opinion, the ones to benefit from the term extension would certainly not be "the vast majority of recording artists (...) Because artists generally do not receive any royalty payments until the record label has covered the cost of production and promotion, this means that 80% of recording artists receive no royalties from their records. Their only income from recording is the non-refundable advance against royalties paid to them by the label so that they can survive whilst working on their album (...) royalty rates are set by the recording company and agreed in binding contracts which usually include pages of restrictions on how the artist can earn money (...) Like any business, record companies are trying to maximise their income."

Gowers Review also recommended the rejection of the proposal on the basis of a study carried out by a specialist team at the University of Cambridge which found only a weak economic increase as a result of the extension of the term (a 2% gain in the industry revenues) with increased costs imposed on the wider economy and society.

Performing artists - no longer be the 'poor cousins' of the music business (14.02.2008)
http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/08/240

EU commissioner: Let's extend music copyrights to 95 years. Ars: 50 years is plenty (14.02.2008)
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080214-eu-commissioner-lets-ext...

EU proposes to allow artists to collect royalties for 95 years (15.02.2008)
http://euobserver.com/9/25669

Longer Copyright Terms and Poor Performing Artists (15.02.2008)
http://www.jorisvanhoboken.nl/?p=131

Release the Music - Should the term of copyright protection for sound recordings be extended? (08.2007)
http://www.openrightsgroup.org/uploads/releasethemusic_aug07.pdf