Elvis has left the building

I was in the pub yesterday with a couple of friends, one of whom mentioned that early rock & roll music has entered the Public Domain after 50 years (on the basis of it being recordings) which means that as this article (via Boing Boing) states means that "That's All Right" is going to enter it on Jan 1 2005. Except that the music industry in Europe is lobbying for the copyright term to be extended by another 45years, thus meaning that early rock and roll will only be availble to buy (if its even still available in any format) until 2050.

Only a couple of the songs would have a commercial value, others are effectively worth nothing and by keeping theses out of PD we loose a valuable commodity showcasing the whole of early Rock'N'Roll, not just the famous artists.

Think of the value of a digital libraries where you could go and listen to the very earliest recordings of a genre and see its development through to the current state.

I would go so far as to suggest that if you have recordings that pre-date 1954, digitise them, start your own archive of recordings. (I 'm not entirely clear that this includes CDs that include recordings from pre-1954 but as far as I can see, as a layman, it should).