News and Events

Academics challenge music copyright policy

2 March 2009

BU academics are challenging the Government’s policy on music copyright.

Academics have written to David Lammy MP, Minister of State for Higher Education and Intellectual Property, demanding to know why the Government has changed its position on copyright term extension.

Professor Martin Kretschmer and Professor Ruth Towse from BU’s Centre for Intellectual Property Policy & Management are among several other eminent economists and intellectual property scholars who have challenged the UK Government’s volte-face.

Professor Martin Kretschmer, who has written widely on the subject, said: “The Government was committed to keeping the existing 50-year term for sound recordings following a recommendation by the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property in 2006.

“The current pressure to extend to 70 or even 95 years has come, we suspect, in response to extensive lobbying. No new independent evidence appears to have been presented.

“This letter calls upon the Minister to present any evidence that has led to this change of policy. The Gowers Review explicitly rejected copyright extension as being a bad deal for the UK in cultural and economic terms.”

Professor Kretschmer continued: “Intellectual property laws are in danger of losing public legitimacy, as the Treasury (then headed by Gordon Brown) noted when it commissioned the Gowers Review. We feel strongly that the public is owed an explanation.”

The letter has also been circulated to the Cabinet Office, Treasury and Department of Culture, Media and Sport.

The change in the copyright term for sound recordings was trailed in a speech at a music industry gathering on 11 December 2008 by Culture Secretary Andy Burnham, and re-affirmed this month by the minister responsible David Lammy. It has since received extensive media coverage. A plenary vote in the European Parliament is scheduled for 23 March.