The out-of-copyright market is already an economically significant one - with companies like Naxos, et al - and is a very effective argument against extension, as one element of a “bad for business, bad for the consumer, bad for the culture” approach.

Of course, the main point that needs to be pushed is that this all about Elvis, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and nothing else - companies that have already made huge profits from these artists, but haven’t had the basic business sense to plan ahead for a slow, predictable loss of back-catalogue revenue. And so they want to lock down their entire back catalogue, most of which they do nothing with, because of revenues from a tiny percentage of those artists.

If people are prepared to pay £10 for an Elvis CD, they do so because they think it’s worth something to them. If the Elvis back-catalogue became public domain, any publisher coujld issue the CDs, and it would not be illegal to obtain the music by copying (I think).

The economic benefits would be huge- anyone could get hold of this music for a reduced cost. Publishers would be forced to compete with low cost music from yesteryear- either by increasing quality or decreasing prices- another public gain. Remixers and Mashup artists would be able to operate with fewer legal hinderances.

Sure, a revenue stream would be lost to the publisher- but they should not have been counting on this revenue stream in the first place. And if many more people get access to the music, but get to keep their £10, this is a larger benefit than that loss.

For consider this; the evil effects of the monopoly are proportioned to the length of its duration. But the good effects for the sake of which we bear with the evil effects are by no means proportioned to the length of its duration. A monopoly of sixty years produces twice as much evil as a monopoly of thirty years, and thrice as much evil as a monopoly of twenty years. But it is by no means the fact that a posthumous monopoly of sixty years gives to an author thrice as much pleasure and thrice as strong a motive as a posthumous monopoly of twenty years. On the contrary, the difference is so small as to be hardly perceptible. We all know how faintly we are affected by the prospect of very distant advantages, even when they are advantages which we may reasonably hope that we shall ourselves enjoy. But an advantage that is to be enjoyed more than half a century after we are dead, by somebody, we know not by whom, perhaps by somebody unborn, by somebody utterly unconnected with us, is really no motive at all to action.

“The Government has previously committed to examining whether the current term of copyright protection on sound recordings and performers’ rights is appropriate. This will also be conducted within the review.”

What’s the betting that this is where the BPI push for the 100 year copyright on sound recordings, and the film folks push for life+90 on films.

However, the terms of reference of the enquiry sound sufficiently reasonable to warrant submission. This should be a good chance for ORG activism. [And I'll happily sponsor it when the donation capability comes on line]

Neil