The below message, and some private communications prompted me to contact Erik Josefsson at the EFF in Brussels. I will be attending a meeting they're holding this coming Friday along with Stevenfruitsmaak (Michael Laurent).

I already have email from Mike Godwin giving a somewhat terse statement opposed to the EU proposal and have contacted the board chair to see if I can get a resolution to take with me and add to the voices opposing this measure. A similar measure was rejected in the UK recently and this just looks like an attempt to bypass the UK saying no and imposing the measure EU-wide.

So... We'll be interviewing Erik Josefsson and covering their meeting, but I think I'll have to leave that to Michael as my main role there will be as a representative of the Communications Committee/WMF trying to find out how we can work with the EFF to oppose this. Erik is - as I understand it - their full time lobbyist dealing with issues in and around the EU folks.

So, questions for Erik are most welcome, the proposal will mostly impact Commons where they could lose material that would otherwise fall into the public domain. Please read and digest the below before asking though, and see Erik's page on the EFF site:

http://www.eff.org/about/staff/erik-josefsson

Likely background research is Israel's recent changes to copyright law which - IIRC - was a liberalisation rather than a more restrictive change. There's also some discussion on foundation-l covering the issue. I'm assuming the EFF will start a petition online about this, if/when they do please sign it and promote it.

Brian McNeil

-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of David Monniaux Sent: 14 February 2008 20:57 To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org; wikifr-l@lists.wikimedia.org Cc: ca@lists.wikimedia.fr Subject: [Foundation-l] EU wants to increase musicians' and singers'copyright to 95 years

The EU currently has two categories of copyright: * The authors' rights, which elapse 70 years after the authors' death. With respect to music, these applies to authors and composers. * Performers' rights, which elapse 50 years after the recording.

Apparently, Charlie McCreevy, EU commissioner, would like to extend the performers' copyright to 95 years after recording: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/02/14/business/EU-FIN-EU-Music-Royalties .php

He claims that there are nowadays many musicians who recorded music in their twenties and now do not earn money anymore from them. I do not see how this justifies 95 years, for few people live to 115 years...

He also claims this would not make the prices of records rise, because the prices for records out-of-copyright with respect to performers' rights are the same as those within copyright.

That may be true, however, his project would be a hindrance for Wikimedia projects. We currently can hope to find old recordings of classical music, which have fallen into the public domain. These would be very hard to find with 95 year terms.

Let us all oppose this move.

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