Thanks to Harry Met­calfe for alert­ing Geeklawyer to the news, greeted with weary ennui, that Par­lia­ment is think­ing of yield­ing to the spe­cial inter­est groups and uber rich lob­by­ing power of the music car­tel. Despite Gower say­ing that extend­ing the mechan­i­cal copy­right term from 50 to 70 years was unjus­ti­fied on eco­nomic grounds the vac­u­ous MPs thought the real issue was morality.

While there is some lim­ited legal basis for tak­ing morals as a basis for a pol­icy posi­tion it is very lim­ited indeed, and mostly imported from the alien civil con­cep­tions of France: things to do with attri­bu­tion defam­a­tory treat­ment etc etc.

The par­lia­men­tary group, argued pri­mar­ily for con­sis­tency of the term of pro­tec­tion: if a com­poser was enti­tled to life + 70 years why shouldn’t a per­former? If nor­mal­i­sa­tion of copy­right term is the pol­icy objec­tive one pre­sumes that the term of other rights will need to be looked at. For exam­ple does the 25 year term for pro­tec­tion of a pub­lished edi­tion need extend­ing to life + 70 on the same basis that there is no argu­ment for a dis­tinc­tion? or the 50 years of a cable-cast right?

Indeed if one is talk­ing of moral­ity per­haps the argu­ment should be reversed: is there any rea­son why an author should get greater term pro­tec­tion than a per­former — per­haps life+70 should be dropped to 50 years?

Indeed if ‘moral­ity’ is the issue why not make it a per­pet­ual right?

At its heart is the fun­da­men­tal ques­tion: “why is prop­erty in intel­lec­tual cre­ations not the same as for any other prop­erty — like the prop­erty in a phys­i­cal object like a house?” A good and much broader ques­tion which I shall pose and then spine­lessly aban­don to another day…