UK copyright term extension proposals

James Boyle has a wonderful article in the FT on the music industry proposals to extend the term of copyright for sound recordings in the UK.

"The whole idea is very stupid. But if this is the stupid idea we wish to pursue, then simply increase the income tax proportionately and distribute the benefits to those record companies and musicians whose music is still commercially available after 50 years. Require them to put the money into developing new artists – something the current proposal does not. Let all the other recordings pass into the public domain.

Of course, no government commission would consider such an idea for a moment. Tax the public to give a monopoly windfall to those who already hit the jackpot, because they claim their industry cannot survive without retrospectively changing the terms of its deals? It is laughable. Indeed it is. Yet it is a better, saner proposal than the one before us. Which tells us something about the current state of copyright policy."