Sound Recording Term Directive adopted

As predicted by Ben's post on Friday, the Council of Ministers this morning adopted the new Copyright Term Extension, with an implementation deadline of 2 years.

There is of course no formal text yet, but the language which will form the new Directive can largely be found here As usual, lots of "minor" details are left to Member States to implement and no doubt that is where the lobbying machine will next be turning - for example, for sound recordings where copyright will revive, Member States have to protect the "acquired rights of third parties" who have been exploiting public domain material.

Interestingly, the list of dissenting countries is quite long - Belgium, the Czech Republic, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden all voting against and Austria and Estonia abstaining - so enthusiasm for this measure is still far from unanimous.