Professor Kretschmer at European Parliment Copyright Hearing | Centre for Intellectual Property Policy & Management

Centre for Intellectual Property Policy & Management

Professor Kretschmer at European Parliament Copyright Hearing

On Tuesday, 27 January, Professor Martin Kretschmer, CIPPM Director at Bournemouth University, spoke at a Hearing in the European Parliament. The European Commission has proposed a Directive extending the term of copyright for sound recordings from 50 to 95 years. The Directive will come to a vote in the European Parliament during the next six weeks.

Professor Kretschmer has coordinated a Europe wide academic response opposing the proposal, with the Centre for Intellectual Property & Information Law (CIPIL), University of Cambridge (Professor Lionel Bently and Dr Rufus Pollock), the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law, Munich (Professor Reto Hilty), and the Institute for Information Law, University of Amsterdam (Professor Bernt Hugenholtz). Their open letter to Members of the European Parliament has been signed by over 90 of the most eminent European economists and intellectual property researchers.

According to Kretschmer's evidence, the chief beneficiaries from extension are:

Major rightholder who control a back catalogue of records that reaches back further than 50 years. The four major multinational record companies Universal, Sony BMG, Warner Music and EMI own almost all the key records that would benefit from retrospective extension, and will gain up to EURO 600m (calculation based on Commission’s own figures)
Best-selling artists such as The Beatles, Cliff Richard, Johnny Hallyday, and their future estates
Collecting societies who will process increased income either from airplay or a social fund (and take a commission for it)
Minor beneficiaries are ordinary working performers. The bottom 80% of performers would each receive only between EURO 4 and EURO 58 a year (calculation based on Commission’s own figures).

The costs of copyright extension in the region of 1bn Euros will be borne by society as a whole. Consumers, innovators and archives will pay for the assumed benefits to the music industry in the form of higher prices, reduced competition, and less innovation and diversity. For performers, the proposal will lead to a redistribution of income from the living to the dead.