[cc-community] They live like aristocrats. Now they think like them

David Berry d.berry at sussex.ac.uk
Sat Dec 9 04:06:56 EST 2006


They live like aristocrats. Now they think like them


The trouble started when they quit Carnaby Street for the mansion  
lifestyle. Now Bono and co have lost the plot on copyright

Marina Hyde
Saturday December 9, 2006
The Guardian

There is a moment in the spoof rock documentary This is Spinal Tap  
when a reporter poses a crushingly direct question to the eponymous  
band's lead singer at the wrap party for their disastrous US tour.  
"Is this, like, your last waltz?" he wonders. "Or are you going to  
milk it for a few more years in Europe?"

This vignette was called to mind by the full-page advertisement  
placed by 4,500 artists in Thursday's Financial Times that petitioned  
the government to extend the copyright on sound recordings to 95  
years from the current 50. Anyone who assumed that this was these  
musicians' last waltz - or perhaps an elaborate ploy by Kiri Te  
Kanawa to get her name in the papers again - should set their faces  
to stunned. Now that the government has accepted the Gowers review  
recommendation that changing the law will give little public benefit,  
this ragtag army of multimillionaires and wronged creatives will be  
milking this one all the way to the European courts, even if the  
suggestion that in 95 years anyone will be dusting down a Katie Melua  
recording seems a triumph of optimism over sanity.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1968136,00.html



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