Ian Anderson, from Jethro Tull, has a complete piece of piffle on copyright in today’s Financial Times (fortunately for subscribers only, so most people will miss it). His point? Europe “only” provides 50 years of copyright for recordings, compared to 95 years in the US and 70 years in Australia, Singapore and Brazil. “Under UK and European legislation, the band’s first album, This Was (1968), is due to fall out of copyright in just 12 years’ time.” More terrifyingly, “Sir Cliff Richard’s first recordings start to fall out of copyright protection in just over two years’ time.”
Anderson argues that “thousands of working musicians” are harmed by this premature loss of copyright. Needless to say, no real figures are given.

The musicians who are fortunate enough to be earning royalties 50 years after their work’s release are not artists starving in chilly garrets. Almost by definition, those works that still have considerable commercial value 50 years on have made their creators very wealthy individuals indeed. I’m sure Larry Lessig has run the numbers on this kind of argument, but I’d wager that a tiny slice of total royalty income comes from work more than 10 years old, and a nearly infinitessimal amount comes from work more than 40 years old.

There must be an editor at the FT who is a Jethro Tull fan from way back, because I can’t figure why else this nonsense would be granted valuable column inches.