Engaging with my MEPs over EU copyright term extension
Posted on Jan 20th by William in Customer service, IdealGov stuff
Oh wow. Check out this timescale. Eight thirty this morning I get an email from RMS (always a pleasure; generally also a challenge) about the ORG video on sound copyright. He’s bothered its on Youtube and not in the open Ogg format for which (among so many other things) he campaigns tirelessly
When my speeches are recorded, I go even further: I ask those recording them to promise to post them ONLY in Ogg formats. This is because I want people to install Ogg players, and I want them to put pressure on the companies (such as Apple) that refuse to support Ogg.
Fair dos – we’ll get ORG to reconsider its policy on this.
But I hadn’t seen the video (which is more than remiss of me). Here it is:
Eek. We knew copyright term extension was a terrible idea supported only by intellectually dishonest and self-interested big-business copyright monopoly holders (and a handful of smug artists…the saintly John Peel may have loved the Undertones, but Piers from my student band threw Sharkey’s drummer out of his school band for being dreadful. None of the subsequent commercial success of the Undertones can undo this. Thus Frank Explicit wins the battle of the bands. But I digress).
Copyright term extension to 95 years is just bad for people who buy music and for the artists who most need help. Now Ive seen the ORG material I can see the vote is imminent, and there’s an ORG event in Brussels on 27th. So the old “writetothem” is pretty urgent.
So I do it (about 0915 what with breakfast and getting Sophia off to gym class and all) I writetothem – all seven of them. And blow me if in barely half an hour I havent had two very clear and encouraging replies. And an intriguing correspondence, rather curt, with an historic figure whose Wikipedia tags include “British far right politicians | Cricket historians and writers | MEPs | English fraudsters”.
First is from the office of Green MEP Caroline Lucas, who is fully aware of the issues, supportive of Creative Commons, and working closely with ORG already. We’re in safe hands here. Hurrah.
Next is from the office of Nigel Farage, not a place where words are minced:
This will benefit, above all, large, corporate copyright-holders, will reduce the cultural value (to the public) of works-of-art and will not materially augment the return-on-their-work for artists.Such effects are characteristic of EU-legislation, which is largely designed by big business, and which is produced in an entirely non-democratic process. That the EU’s largely powerless, consultative assembly is elected – by 27 separate and mutually uncommunicative electorates – does not make it democratically elected, and the real powers of the EU (in the Commission, Council and Court) are not elected at all.
This is why the UKIP votes against every piece of EU-legislation – for all the effect that has, in an assembly dominated by EU-imperialists – and bitterly opposes Britain’s continued entanglement in the EU-structure.
Well, that sounds like another no, tho we may yet need to clarify. There’s a request for more info, for which I shall engage the forces of ORG.
Oh, but what’s this? Ashley Mote MEP now writes to say that as an author he cannot agree with me. Shame. Does the extension to 95 years really make that much difference? The convicted fraudster is 72 already, so his self-interest in this matter is about the royalties his books on cricket might still collect decades after his death.
So I query this. He then writes to say he votes against all EU law on principle (also to remind me he’s no longer part of UKIP, and to allege that his former colleague Nigel Farage knows nothing about copyright and cares even less). This may not be ideal, but if he does actually vote it sounds like it will be the right way here.
To be fair, his description does not match the impression I get from my correspondence with Nigel Farage’s office which allies a rational Euro-scepticism with a clear level of engagement with copyright extension issues, coupled with an openness to receiving more information. Can’t ask for fairer than that.
I don’t get it. What a powerful yet weird place the European institutions seem to be! Funny that blogging this has taken far longer than engaging with three out of my seven MEPs. Anyway: write to yours! It’s easy, and it’s fun! (My own original letter to the MEPs is below)Dear Ashley Mote, Sharon Bowles, Caroline Lucas, Nirj Deva, Nigel Farage, Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne and Peter Skinner
EU PLANS FOR COPYRIGHT TERM EXTENSION
=====================================
As a consumer of music and former professional recording artist (albeit not a particularly successful one) I find it enfuriating that self-interested industry lobbying based on flimsy and misleading evidence might prevail in European legislation on which you will vote soon and to which we will all be subject for decades.
If you allow copyright term extension, in the face of the best academic evidence from across Europe including a Cambridge study and the Gowers review, it will stifle creativity which would reuse orphan works, increase costs for consumers, and line the pockets of the recording industry with little or no benefit to the artists who need help.
The Open Rights Group (for which I’ve done voluntary work at Board level since its formation) has done an excellent short video on the subject – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kijON_XODUk
…and there’s a very instructive “Sound Copyright” event on 27 Jan in Brussels – the invitation is at http://soundcopyright.eventbrite.com .
I do hope you can make it or have someone attend on your behalf.
And above all I do hope you will speak out, using the strong evidence available, against the poorly conceived copyright term extension plans for which the copyright-monopoly holding businesses have lobbied with a
combination of naked self-interest and intellectual dishonesty. And vote down these plans.
Forgive my writing to you en masse, but I believe you are all my MEPs, you all have a vote, and I have only ever met one or two of you in person.
I’d be grateful if you could let me know your intentions. My email is wmheath@gmail.com
Yours faithfully
William Heath
(Signed with an electronic signature in accordance with subsection 7(3) of the Electronic Communications Act 2000.)
