Thursday 20 January 2005

BMG are brickin' it

Anyone wondering why BMG Europe are releasing an Elvis single a week for the foreseeable future?

Seems their European copyrights are due to expire on large amounts of his material and while they petition governments to extend copyrights, they're rushing as much crap into the charts as possible to make as much money in as little time as they can... just in case.

Without ammendments to the law, Elvis' track "That's All Right" has fallen into the public domain as of 1 January 2005, so play it where and when you want and you don't have to pay anyone for the privledge!

As it currently works, the copyright law is as such:

- In the United States, under the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, sound recordings are protected for 95 years from the day of recording. For recordings done post-1976, coverage is the artist's life plus 70 years.

- In most of the European Union, the duration is 50 years after the first release of a sound recording.

Link: Elvisnews.com

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