☂Marcos Marado

"In setting up the rationalist background of his title, Professor Bently noted that the 2004 EC Staff Working Paper, the Gowers Report, and the EC-commissioned IVIR report had all approached the question rationally, with evidence-based and economic reasoning. Each had come out against extension. Categorising the counter-arguments under 5 headings, he analysed and found fault in the record industry’s justifications based on incentivisation, lost income, incentive for digitisation, harmonisation with the US, and trading interests. Incentivatisation in particular was a baseless argument given that there could be no creative incentive present in extending copyright in an existing work. Similarly, incentivising digitisation provided no rational basis for term extension – if that objective required incentives, the rational approach would be to reward the digitiser, not the existing owner. The case against term extension had been definitively underwritten in the well-known “17 Nobel prize-winning economists’ brie" - ☂Marcos Marado via Bookmarklet

"Professor Bently observed that extending performer’s rights comes at a cost to society. It is a political question as to whether that cost is worth paying, but the correct approach is to identify the cost and decide that it is worth bearing. The professor added that, in his own view, the cost was indeed a cost worth paying." - ☂Marcos Marado

"However, he raised several notes of concern: if extension is really to protect the interests of performers, (a) why does it also apply to sound recordings, (b) why is it not an inalienable right of the performer, and (c) why is it for 95 years rather than the life of the performer? He noted that the problems with term extension are such that UK IP academics, the Max Planck Institute and promenant economists have lined up to oppose it." - ☂Marcos Marado