This would indeed be a HUGE problem for Wikimedia projects. I don't know
where our EU commissioner took that strange idea from, but it is totally
nonsense. I don't think there would be many artists benefiting from this
; but for us, this would really be bad news. Finding records whose
author has died at least 95 years ago is very, very difficult. But I
guess we're not the only ones who would face this problem : probably
other free culture projects, but also internet sites, etc. could help us
oppose this.
This seems to me to be part of a larger problem. As with the US willing
to abolish rule of the shorter term, governments seem to be
strengthening their copyright rules, making projects such as Wikimedia's
face important problems. In a time when many people are uploading
illegally their music from the internet, this seems to me to be total
nonsense : it will become even more difficult to upload free music,
which means that people will illegally upload music, even more than now,
from artists who want to have their music protected. Instead of
uploading free PD early-20th-century music, people will be uploading
copyrighted music ; but if it's copyrighted, then why not take recent
music, 2008 music ? I don't think that's what EU wants, but that what
it's gonna get. So I don't see the point in this.
Yrs
fr:User:Benjism89