Thursday, April 20, 2006
Cliff Richard, how very dare you
Ancient, granny pleasing rocker, Cliff Richard, made the BBC news yesterday with his continuing whinge about copyright expiry. Apparently 50 years of royalties are insufficient for Sir Cliff, and he wants more. Whilst the USA has gone crazy and now grants stupidly long copyright periods, we in the UK have retained a sensible, pragmatic approach and granted a limited period of exclusive profits to the copyright holder.
Lets move this away from music for a moment and imagine if drug companies were given 50 or 100 years on patents rather than the 15 to 25 years they get at the moment. Whilst this would make shareholders happy in the short term it wouldn’t drive innovation – why innovate when you have a long monopoly. Well for me the copyright argument is the same; a copyright should reward the artist for their work, but shouldn’t make them lazy and stop them innovating.
So Sir Cliff, if you want future royalties you need to keep writing new songs rather than worrying about songs you wrote 50 years ago and that have paid you handsomely over this time.
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