Sir Cliff Richard
The day after the last Top of the Pops, a singer who was already past it when Top of the Pops began, Sir Cliff Richard, wants copyright protection on sound recordings (not writing) increased to 70 years from the present 50 years. It's not hard to imagine why - some of his earliest recordings are now out of copyright. Indeed with the 1960s soon 50 years ago this is a whinge we are going to hear more of.Tim Worstall has a good post on the subject on the ASI, and it is good to see it coming from a 'libertarian'. Some libertarians take the view that intellectual property is exactly the same as normal property, and thus the limit should not be 70 years but an infinite number of years.
As Tim says the issue should be creativity. The easy joke which both Tim and I can't avoid is that anything which limits Sir Cliff's creativity would have been a positive step. However even for fans of the man, I would love to see how they can argue that in the 1950s he reduced his output because he knew the recordings would be out of copyright in the 2000s.
posted by Matthew @ 7/31/2006 08:43:00 AM
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