For almost 10 years now, I’ve been waging a war against
retrospective term extension. My simple argument has been that
copyright is about creative incentives, and you can’t create incentives
retrospectively.
I now see I am apparently wrong.
As reported yesterday,
there was an ad in the FT listing 4,000 musicians who supported
retrospective term extension. If you read the list, you’ll see that at
least some of these artists are apparently dead (e.g. Lonnie Donegan,
died 4th November 2002; Freddie Garrity, died 20th May 2006). I take it
the ability of these dead authors to sign a petition asking for their
copyright terms to be extended can only mean that even after death,
term extension continues to inspire.
I’m not yet sure how. But I guess I should be a good sport about it,
and just confess I was wrong. For if artists can sign petitions after
they’ve died, then why can’t they produce new recordings fifty years
ago?
