Regulators at the European level have voted to extend the copyright in sound recordings for a further 20 years. In so doing, they have more or less condemned the vast majority of music to the dustbins of history.

This Wired UK article explains:

But a government-backed, independent review of copyright doesn’t agree. A 2006 Gowers Review of Intellectual Property said, “The European Commission should retain the length of protection on sound recordings and performers’ rights at 50 years”

In its conclusion, the review says, “it is our view that a term extension will likely result in a net loss to UK society as a whole”, arguing that while retrospective extensions would line the pockets of the largest record producers, money to individual performers would be minimal and the cost to the consumer would be massive.

But that report has mattered little, as regulators in the EU have given the thumbs up to extending copyright terms to 70 years. On 12 September 2011, a Council of Ministers will have the final say and if they rubber-stamp the changes, member states will be required to write them into law by 2014.

What this might mean is that people who played on the tiny fraction of recordings from over 50 years ago that are still commercially viable may be able to sustain a trickle of income from it. If they were 25 when they played guitar on a pop hit that still shows up on compilations, they might be able to buy themselves a beer as a result of that in their 90s. Hooray.

Of course, most of them won’t because the deals they signed at the time means that virtually all income returns to the major labels instead. But let’s leave that inconvenient fact aside for a moment.

What this also means is that the overwhelming majority of music from over 50 years ago that is NOT commercially exploited by the major record labels also remains out of the public domain. And because it is still owned by the labels, it is retained in their vaults. On magnetic tape. Decaying – never to be heard again.

Deleted by legislation.

As Steve Lawson points out, the compositions are still life of the author plus 70 years, so reissuing the recordings in the public domain would generate more for the songwriters. But this decision is not made for the benefit of songwriters, composers, audiences, music researchers or for the benefit of culture.

It is a profoundly anti-music decision.

Worse, the Musicians Union – a body purporting to represent the interests of their members – have decided to side with the BPI in their support of this copyright extension, confirming their status as pro-popstar, pro-corporate entertainment complex and pro-copyright maximisation… but utterly anti-music, and anti-musician.

I know some good people in the MU, and I can think of good reasons to be a member. But at a public policy level, the Musicians Union has become complicit in some of the worst decisions and campaigns that are not to the benefit of their members at all, but solely for the good of the corporate record industry.

I don’t think they have been fooled by BPI rhetoric. I don’t think they’re stupid. I didn’t say “deluded” – I said “complicit”.

So the question becomes… why?