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Business News
New IP minister appointed
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 26 May 2010
The British music industry possibly scored a victory when the previous UK parliament passed the Digital Economy Act. And those in the grass roots live sector are now optimistic that the new found power of the Lib Dems in the UK’s new coalition government will mean the Liberal-supported reforms of the 2003 Licensing Act, to make staging small-scale live music events less bureaucratic, may now happen.
But there remains one big political issue for the record industry that is far from being resolved, that of copyright extension, which has sort of gone on the back burner of late, after a flurry of activity at a European level at the start of last year. The record industry wants the sound recording copyright term to be extended from its current fifty years, preferably to 95 years. It’s a want with a pressing deadline, under the current system The Beatles catalogue starts to come out of copyright in 2013.
The main previous achievement in that domain, for the record industry on a UK level, was convincing the former Intellectual Property Minister David Lammy that he should campaign within Europe for the copyright term to be extended, previously the UK government was against extension. It remains to be seen what his successor, Tory Lord Judith Wilcox, thinks about the issue.
But presumably record industry’s lobbying types will begin a charm offensive on the Baroness following yesterday’s announcement that she will head up the Intellectual Property Office, which sits under Vince Cable’s Department For Business Innovation And Skills.
