EU extends musical copyrights by 20 years, eyes feature films

“The European Parliament late last week agreed to extend musical copyrights from their current 50-year term to 70 years. So all that early rock ‘n roll about to pass into the public domain? Don’t count on using it in your documentary for another two decades—and there’s nothing to say that the term won’t be extended agai,” Nate Anderson reports for Ars Technica.

“While the vote is a big victory for the music labels who can continue to market major artists like The Beatles… the movie industry looks set to cash in soon, too. In passing the term extension, Parliament also asked the European Commission ‘to launch an impact assessment of the situation in the European audiovisual sector by January 2010, with a view to deciding whether a similar copyright extension would benefit the audiovisual world,'” Anderson reports.

Full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Brawndo Drinker” for the heads up.]

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