Against widespread dissent and controversy MEPs in the European Parliament voted this morning to allow copyright term extension to pass a first reading.

4 out of the 7 main groups (ALDE, GREENS/EFA, NGL, IND/ DEM) together with a cross party platform of MEPs voted to reject the proposal. Internal opposition threatened the group positions of the two largest parties (PSE and EPP) as several national delegations and key MEPS also joined the fight to reject. We understand that, in total, 222 voted in favour of rejection, 370 against. The final vote was 317 in favour, 178 against, 37 abstentions. A key amendment to ensure benefits accrued only to performers was also rejected.

The proposal now moves forward to the Council of Ministers where it is currently blocked by member states. The fundamental problems remain: how to include a workable use-it-or-lose it clause; agreeing to deliver real benefits to the vast majority of performers; how to avoid breaking the respect necessary for a functioning IP system by simply taking money from the pockets of consumers.

While the lobbying of powerful vested interests pushed the proposal through, the widespread condemnation in the press, among stakeholders, and in the European Parliament shows that our argument has been won in the eyes of the public and that Europe must create balanced and fair copyright if it wants a system fit for purpose in the 21st century.

We know that many of you wrote to your MEPs in the run up to plenary and for that we thank you. We also remind you that you can have your say on MEPs in the European elections in June and will be releasing a full roll call of the of votes when we obtain it.

Discussions on the proposal will be held in the Council of Ministers and you can find out how to contact your governments relevant IP body here. (We understand the blocking minority is currently made up of Slovenia, Portugal, Austria, Netherlands, Sweden, Slovakia, Denmark, Belgium, Finland, Romania).

We thank you again for your support again and will keep you updated.

Image by Melanie and John under CC

Wednesday is the last full day to lobby your MEPs in Strasbourg before this Thursday's vote on copyright term extension.

A cross party platform of MEPs have tabled an amendment to reject the proposal to extend the term of sound copyrights beyond 50 years. Contact your MEPs in Strasbourg and ask them to support the rejection amendment tabled by Sharon Bowles, Andrew Duff and Olle Schmidt ALDE, Guy Bono, PSE, Christofer Fjellner, Zuzana Roithova, Anna Ibrisagic EPP.

Find your MEPs here

As the Financial Times said this week: Do not enclose the cultural commons!

Amendment 1
by Sharon Bowles, Andrew Duff and Olle Schmidt ALDE, Guy Bono, PSE, Christofer Fjellner, Zuzana Roithova, Anna Ibrisagic EPP

on the proposal for a directive of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Directive 2006/116/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on the term of protection of copyright and related rights (COM(2008)0464 – C6-0281/2008 – 2008/0157(COD))

Proposal for a directive – REJECTION

Text proposed by the Commission Amendment

Rejects the Commission Proposal.

Justification

The draft Directive is poorly conceived and disproportionate. The Commission claims that the measure is needed in order to benefit poor performers. However, the proposed regulation and procedure is complicated and over-bureaucratic. The biggest beneficiaries will be the four largest record companies. Individual performers will only receive very small amounts each.

Performers could be helped much more effectively by regulating copyright contracts and collecting societies, by setting up appropriate social security and insurance schemes, and by reconsidering remuneration rights and license tariffs.

The draft Directive leaves a large number of questions unanswered. Additional impact assessments are needed to see which measures are best suited to help those performers really in need, to limit the negative impact on consumers and jobs, and to establish if regulation is best done at state or EU level. In these circumstances, it is not wise to proceed to make the long-term permanent changes proposed.

Some of the particular problems are:

The extension of copyright to 95 or even 70 years will increase the revenue of trust funds of deceased performers instead of living performers.

Many performers cannot produce proof for the performances they participated in during the past decades. It then becomes difficult to assess their rights to payments.

The proposed regulation could cause legal uncertainty for all existing audiovisual productions as it will be unclear if the material used is subject to sound copyright.

There is a risk that all material that is not commercially viable will not be marketed by the copyright owners and will become inaccessible for public use.

Small record companies currently publishing copyright-free material risk going bankrupt.

Intense lobbying pressure has resulted in last minute tabling of the copyright term extension proposal, for a full plenary vote in the European Parliament, in Strasbourg next thursday. However, with the European elections rapidly approaching and the Council of Ministers currently blocking the proposal, its future cannot be guaranteed.

Reanimating a discredited text that doesn't deliver what it purports and misleads politicians and cheats the public sends the wrong signal to European voters. Act now and contact your MEPs and demand they reject the proposal.

MEPs will be in their Brussels offices this Friday and next Monday and in Strasbourg from Tuesday on. Let them know why copyright extension is the wrong move.

Following the surprise postponement of a full plenary vote, next week representatives from the European Parliament, EU Commission and Council will be meeting to try and hammer out some consensus amid the controversy surrounding copyright term extension. From next Monday MEPs will return from Strasbourg to their offices in Brussels, so please tell them why you oppose the term extension proposal.

The priority MEPs for you to contact are Labour (PSE), Conservative (EPP), and Liberals (ALDE) across all Europe. (In the UK the most ardent supporters of extension are Arlene Macarthy (PSE), Malcolm Harbour (EPP) and Bill Newton-Dunne (ALDE)).

We've prepared some super-simple info to help you act now to oppose copyright extension: http://soundcopyright.eu/act.

You might have followed last week's debate in the Daily Telegraph between Professor Martin Kretschmer and Horace Trubridge of the British Musicians' Union. If you didn't you can catch it here.

Also, this article in response - in support of copyright term extension - is worth commenting on.

Send us your comments to info at soundcopyright dot eu too so we know what you think.

Amid intense lobbying in the European Parliament next Monday's vote on the proposal to extend the term of copyright has been struck off in a shock move. Following a meeting of the presidents of the political groups in the European Parliament on Tuesday, and with controversy and a lack of consensus surrounding the proposal, MEPs have delayed voting till the end of April - just before this summer's European elections. A trialogue discussion between the European Commission, Council and Parliament, set for the end of March, will now attempt to broker a deal to see if the directive will be allowed to pass.

MEPs are waking up to the reality that the proposal to extend copyright term doesn't do what it says. It's a terrible and unworkable instrument that will do nothing but bring copyright into disrepute in the eyes of consumers. If you're concerned about the need for a fair and balanced copyright framework you must contact your MEPs now. Make your voice heard!

In other news this week Professor Martin Kretschmer, Director of the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy & Management Bournmemouth, and Horace Trubridge, Assistant General Secretary of the British Musicians' Union, have been debating the copyright term extension proposal. Additionally copyright creators in the Association for Fair Audiovisual Copyright in Europe have launched a petition against the proposal.

But right now the most important thing is to contact your MEPs and tell them why copyright term extension is a bad idea! Use our web banners and spread the word.

With the European Parliament set to vote on 23 March on extending the term of copyright for sound recordings, key European experts opposing the extension have released a new letter to MEPs warning of the dangers. Highlighting that the costs to the public are likely to exceed €1 billion the academics warn:

If Europe wishes to keep its ability to innovate, it must not lock in the current industry structure at a moment of great technological change, it must not inhibit digital creators and archives in the exploration of music - music which has been paid for once already, during the existing term!

The public will not be fooled. If copyright law, cynically, departs from its purpose, piracy becomes an easy option.

We urge the European Parliament, and the governments of member states of the European Union, to consider carefully the independent evidence on copyright term extension, and reject the Directive in its proposed form.

Your MEPs need to know that their voters are concerned and paying attention - use our guide to lobbying your MEPs (click to download) and a briefing pack (click to download).

We can't overstate it: get in touch with your MEPs now and use our new banners and buttons to spread the word.

In an open letter sent today to David Lammy, UK Minister for Innovation, some of the UK's most eminent economists and intellectual property scholars, have hit out at UK government proposals to consider changing policy on term extension. The letter, which has also been sent to the UK Cabinet Office, Treasury and Culture Minister, voices serious concern at the lack of evidence justifying a change that seems to show the Government prefers special interests over facts.

An extension of 20 years was the focus of discussion during the UK government's own review, led by the former Financial Times Editor Andrew Gowers, who looked at the evidence and concluded that any extension, whether by 5, 20 or 45 years, was a bad idea for consumers, creators and follow-on innovators.

So we certainly shouldn't be falling for the classic 'ask for double and settle for half' rouse today.

Longer copyright terms would put money into the hands of record companies and dead artists' estates, at the expense of royalties to musicians trying to earn money today. Yet the music companies peddle lies about supporting poor artists.

Update: this video is now available to stream and download in Ogg Vorbis format.

The Open Rights has been telling MEPs in Europe and in the UK that the evidence is against a copyright extension on music. But with a plenary vote set for late march the EU will force-feed it to us anyway unless we let MEPs know. We urge you again - write to your MEPs now!

Consumer groups, musicians, academics and industry stakeholders, together with a cross party panel of MEPs, hit out at the "fairy tale" of copyright term extension at the ORG "Sound Copyright" conference in the European Parliament last week.

One by one speakers rubbished the proposal to extend copyright term as outgoing ORG Executive Director Becky Hogge pointed out that “All the evidence shows that the term extension directive will do very little and almost nothing to help the poor performer and everything to line the pockets of the world’s record labels.”

You can see the opening speeches by Becky above and here and by Pekka Gronow (Part 1, Part 2), sound archivist and professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Helsinki. Professor Gronow's account of the conference is also available on his blog. We'll update you with more video and speeches very soon.

Update: this video is now available to stream and download in Ogg Vorbis format.

Next week the Legal Affairs (JURI) committee will likely vote to push the proposal to a full plenary vote in Parliament in March against fierce opposition from the representatives of 42 consumer rights organisations (BEUC), 29 privacy and civil rights organisations (EDRI), over 650,000 library and information professionals worldwide (IFLA), ORG (UK), Consumer Focus (UK) and the EFF (US). With this in mind we urge you to contact your MEPs either in Brussels or at their home constituency and let them know why term extension should be rejected.

MEPs are coming under increasing pressure from industry lobbyists now claiming parity with countries with longer copyright terms as a justification for term extension, despite the European Commission denying that 'comparative advantage' with longer terms was a basis for the extension. (See P. 11, 12.) Show your MEP our cartoon "How copyright extension in sound recordings actually works" and get them to sign our petition and reject copyright extension!

IP watch covered our event, and Cory Doctorow writing in the Guardian echoed the chorus of concern and disapproval already voiced in international press from the International Herald Tribune to the Financial Times.

Our cartoon "How copyright extension in sound recordings actually works" has also been translated into French, Italian and Spanish, with versions appearing on Facebook and Blip TV. Now reaching a total of 30,000 views it hit the top 10 most popular political videos in the week that Obama was elected! Tell your MEPs to reject term extension now!

Today, organisations representing consumers, citizens and libraries around the world united to condemn copyright term extension in Europe. The joint statement was sent to MEPs who sit on the committees that will decide the flawed Term Extension Directive's future. It read:

The European Parliament is being asked to nearly double the term of copyright afforded to sound recordings. Industry lobbyists suggest that extending copyright term will help increase the welfare of performers and session musicians. But the Term Extension Directive, which will be voted on by the Legal Affairs Committee in a few weeks' time, will do no such thing. Instead it will hand millions of euros over to the world's four major record labels, money that will come direct from the pockets of European consumers. The majority (80%) of recording artists will receive between €0.50 - €26 a year.

Helping poor recording artists is a commendable aim. But the Term Extension Directive insults these good intentions. Andrew Gowers, former editor of the Financial Times, who conducted an independent review into the intellectual property framework for the UK Government in 2006, has called it out of tune with reality. Professor Bernt Hugenholtz, who advises the European Commission on intellectual property issues, has called it a deliberate attempt on behalf of the Commission to mislead Europe's Parliament. If passed, the Term Extension Directive will have serious consequences for Europe's IP policy.

• Any extension of copyright term will take money directly from consumers' pockets. It will also consign a large part of Europe's cultural heritage to a commercial vacuum.
• Europe's leading IP research centres have clearly shown the proposal does not do what it purports to do - help the poorest performers. It is simply a windfall for the owners of large back catalogues and the top earning performers.
• The proposal will undermine public respect for copyright law and introduce an unworkable and unproven framework for copyright, at the very time when Europe's copyright framework needs to be at its most robust.

We therefore ask you to vote to reject this directive, as per Amendment 15 of the ITRE opinion (David Hammerstein).

As well as EFF, Open Rights Group and Consumer Focus, the statement was signed by BEUC, the umbrella organisation representing 42 consumer rights organisations in Europe, EDRI, the umbrella organisation representing 29 privacy and civil rights organisations across Europe, and IFLA, the umbrella organisation representing over 650,000 library and information professionals worldwide. You can download the full statement here.

Thanks to everyone for the great response to the cartoon we released last week. It's already had over 14,000 views, been translated into Spanish, and it's currently eleventh in YouTube's top favourited News and Politics videos (not bad for the week Obama got inaugurated). But the battle is by no means won yet - please, if you can, come to our event in Brussels next week, or invite your MEP to come on your behalf (UK residents/Other EU residents).

The European Parliament is set to vote on whether to double the term of copyright in sound recordings in early 2009. The Open Rights Group Sound Copyright campaign invites you to register your concern at an event on the proposed Term Extension Directive, on Tuesday 27 January 2009, in the European Parliament in Brussels.

Update: this video is now available to stream and download in Ogg Vorbis format.

This flawed Directive has been unanimously condemned by Europe's leading intellectual property research centres. The European Parliament must address the mounting concerns of consumer groups and copyright users if they want a modern, workable intellectual property policy. Please, if you can, come to Brussels and register your concern. If you can't make it, please invite your MEP to attend on your behalf.

How you can help the campaign:

1) Come to an event on 27 January in the European Parliament in Brussels to hear academics, musicians and activists discuss the Directive with a roundtable of MEPs.

2) Invite your MEP to attend the 27 January event on your behalf (you can get their contact details here: UK residents; Other EU residents)

3) Invite your MEP to sign the Sound Copyright petition

4) Ask your MEP to watch the Open Rights Group's cartoon "How copyright term extension in Sound Recordings actually works"

The Open Rights Group and animators Eclectech, whose work has included pieces for Friends of the Earth and No2ID, have produced a short animation explaining "How copyright term extension in Sound Recordings actually works". Check it out and show your friends and your MEPs why term extension is a really bad idea.

In other news, the former editor of the Financial Times, Andrew Gowers, has hit out at the possibility of an "out of tune" term extension, following the UK Government's suggestion that they should consider a copyright extension. Gowers whose original evidence-based review for the UK Government concluded against extending copyright described it as as "out of tune with reality".