BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) — Singers and musicians should earn royalty fees for 95 years, almost double the current 50-year limit, a European Union official said Thursday as he promised to draft new copyright protection rules.
"If nothing is done, thousands of European performers who recorded in the late 1950s and 1960s will lose all of their airplay royalties over the next ten years," said EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy, the union's internal market chief. "These royalties are often their sole pension."
People are living longer, and 50 years of copyright protection no longer gives lifetime income to performers who recorded hits in their late teens or early twenties, he said.
Most European composers and lyricists currently receive lifetime copyright protection, which passes to their descendants for another 70 years. The new EU rules would not change that.
The new rules would mean performers would get the same 95 years of protection their U.S. counterparts enjoy.
McCreevy said record companies that refuse to rerelease a record during the extended copyright period should not be able to prevent artists from moving to a new label.
The new rules won't increase consumer prices because the price of records out of copyright is often the same as — or higher than — that of newly released discs, he said.
The EU executive also wants to look again at reforming copyright levies charged on blank discs, data storage and music and video players to compensate artists and copyright holders for legal copying when listeners burn an extra version of an album to play one at home and one in the car.
Most European countries charge copyright levies, which add $14.59 to the cost of an 8 gigabyte MP3 player in Finland, $10.21 in France and $3.73 in Germany, manufacturers' group EICTA says. Copyright levies totaled $657 million in 2005.
Electronics manufacturers claim it is unfair to hand over millions of dollars in fees to copyright collectors for all devices containing a storage facility — such as phones that can play digital music files or even printers.
Composers' representatives say these charges are exaggerated.
The levies are charged and paid to artists in 19 of the EU's 25 nations. None are charged in Britain, Ireland or Cyprus, while different systems operate in Greece, Luxembourg and Malta.
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