Indefinite extension of copyright only helps big media

Danny O'Brien of the Irish Times views with alarm the EU's proposal to one-up the Americans by making already-long copyright terms even longer:

Copyright term extension is a policy that most economic experts, left and right, agree has given little benefit to artists and a lot to major media companies seeking to eke out an income from their back catalogue.

The public domain – the free space that all copyrighted works fall into after their time is up – is flourishing. It’s easier to find a work that’s fallen out of copyright (like Night of the Living Dead, a 1968 film that fell into the public domain due to administrative error), than to obtain a paid-for copy of many VHS classics.

Meanwhile, old films – not just Mickey Mouse – that should have entered the public domain by now, allowing them to be freely copied and preserved are literally fading away, rotting as single copies in film studio vaults.

The only real earnings will be made by millionaire musicians and the labels. When we nearly double the monopoly control of companies over artistic works, we aren’t simply pulling profits out of thin air. The money comes from the billions extra that will be billed to shops, restaurants and others who will pay more for music.

It’s a stacked deck: there’s no union of future musicians arguing for their promised right to 50 years of source material. There’s no league of imaginary archivists, pointing out how recordings that would otherwise be preserved and spread within the public domain will vanish in a dozen years of music label neglect.

The purpose of copyright is to encourage creativity, but there's absolutely no way that extending copyright protection for a century or more is accomplishing that goal.

(Image from Wikipedia)