ScriptumLibre opposes neighbouring rights term extension
With great concern ScriptumLibre / Vrijschrift learned about the commissions proposal to extend neighboring rights from 50 to 95 years after the date of performance.
Such proposals have been made earlier, and have been rejected by the European parliament, and various national parliaments as unnecessary and not serving any public purpose, such as the promotion of culture and arts. They merely stem from rent-seeking behavior from a small group of rights-holders who wish to maintain a stream of royalty income on works near the end of their current term. No sound economical benefit of such an extension has been demonstrated. The emotional plea, supported by a number of well known artists also is misleading, as all these artists have already been able to receive royalties on their performances for fifty years, and often continue to control the dissemination of their work through copyrights on the underlying works.
The argument that terms for neighboring rights need to be extended to match longer copyrights, and then proposing a term still different (but in force in the US) makes little sense.
Furthermore, outside the small but influential circle of large corporate rights-holders and their agents, there is a growing consensus that current copyrights terms are way too long, and as a result are obstructing, rather than promoting a diverse and vibrant creative culture. In particular artists themselves suffer from the growing burden to clear copyrights in an environment where rights are continuously expanded. It is time to reverse this trend.
This particular proposal will restrict access to all performances since the onset of the first world war, often recorded on obsolete and fragile media. Extended neighboring rights will seriously hinder their preservation. Due to technological advances, most of these recordings have limited commercial value; they are an irreplaceable part of our cultural heritage, and are important to research. To purposely block the conservation of these historical works is little short of wanton destruction of cultural heritage.
The current copyright regime has turned into a private tax on culture, which restricts the access of citizens to cultural heritage, and even blocks its preservation. An increasingly small fraction of these taxes actually end up with artists and authors.
We strongly urge the commission and the European Parliament to refrain from adding further undue burdens on our culture.
ScriptumLibre (Vrijschrift in Dutch) promotes free culture.