EUOBSERVER / FOCUS - Music performers and producers have attacked EU law for being too stingy on intellectual property when it comes to the length of the copyright after an artist's death.
Under EU rules, authors of songs and their families benefit from copyright for the whole of their lives plus 70 years, while performers of songs and their producers benefit for just 50 years from the date of recording.
"Imagine that you, with a rigorous effort, buy a house and that then after 50 years, by law, you are thrown out so that anyone else can live in it," Spanish singer and producer Ramon Arcusa told Spanish daily El Pais. "It is not fair."
"There is no weighty argument to why authors should be awarded more than the artist, what happened is that we entered the legislation game after they did," said Luis Cobos, the head of the Spanish society of performing artists' managers - AISGE.
"Who knows the French composer Jacques Revaux - the author of 'My Way'? The song was made popular by Frank Sinatra and so who has more merit?" MrCobos asked.
Performers and producers on the old continent are among the least-well protected in the world in music copyright terms.
In the US, performers and producers hold recording rights for between 95 and 120 years, while performers in Mexico get 75 years and 70 years in Chile, Brazil, Peru and Turkey.
"Something that confuses me is that the works I write are protected during my life plus 70 years more, but my interpretations of songs are only protected for 50 years," British artist Jamie Callum said, according to the Spanish paper.
"I would ask the EU why these laws on intellectual property are so unjust," the singer added.
The European Commission and the UK treasury are currently studying the possibility of extending European performers' rights along American lines but any new legislation is still months if not years away.
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