iPodders versus Brussels

The war over copyright continues to rage on, well past its 300th birthday.

The latest battle in the fight between openness and protection is prompted by the European Union. It is proposing to bring the protection of recordings “into line with” that of literary works. It wants member states to give 95 years to recordings, now only 50 years.

Literary works are 70 years from the death of the author. The first copyright act, in 1709, gave the copyholder just 14 years. Since then the length of copyright has been the cause of own warfare between owners and users.

On the other side of the battle against the EU is a battalion of heavy European academics. They have gone public today with a letter to The Times. They are very unhappy about two things:
They were not consulted; and
The move will alienate a younger generation that fails to see a principled basis to the extension.

So it’s the iPoders versus Brussels. In the spirit of the famous “Up Yours Delors” campaign of The Sun I have a proposal.

At a set time everybody goes outside, takes out their iPod, mobile phone etc and waves it in the direction of Brussels chanting “Bugger off Barroso”.