Mash Ups Get Political Backing, Bands Scream Stop!

MusicThing points us to an interesting part of Gordon Brown’s annual Budget speech yesterday. It seems that while there will be an increased effort to deter music and film pirates, he also wants make it easier to produce ‘transformative works’. The Times says: “The report suggests that exemptions to copyright law should be allowed for “transformative works”. The Times reports:

The Chancellor is expected to point out that 25 years ago the market value of top British companies was no more than the value of their physical assets. Now it is five times their physical value because of the advantage that flows from knowledge, ideas and creative products.

While getting tough on infringement of the rules, the report also proposes a liberalisation to help the creative industries, arguing that at least two of the exciting developments in the American music and business world might have happened in Britain.

The report suggests that exemptions to copyright law should be allowed for “transformative works”. This would permit the use of copyright material in new and creative ways, so long as it did not detract from the value of that material or offend artistic integrity. It calls on the EU to amend the law to allow for that exception.

It would allow “rappers” and other creators to rework old material. The rise of hip-hop in the US has been attributed to that relaxation.

Similarly, the existence of the exemption in America was cited by Google to the Gowers report as one of the reasons that search engines started there rather than in Britain. It allowed them to “cache” the content of other websites without breaching copyright.

Meanwhile Brand Republic points us to an ad in the Financial Times that features thousands of signatories on behalf of 3,500 recording companies campaigning for UK copyright law on recordings to be extended from the present 50 years to 95 years: It has a the headline “Fair Play For Musicians” and says, “We call upon the UK government to support the extension of copyright in sound recordings.”