They didn't get there in time to stop the beginnings of Elvis from falling into the public's hands, but it looks like the record companies are going to get their way in the UK, according to The Times. Ninety-year copyright terms, then, propping up the giants of the music industry, because fifty years of living off The Beatles has left them poor. Corporate Welfare is fun!

In other "I hate the music industry so much I want to feed it to woolly mammoths" news, EMI and Warners are sniffing after Sanctuary Records, the indie-label success of recent years. This makes no sense whatsoever; Sanctuary is mainly made up of bands that were dropped by the majors, so why bother buying them back? Are they just jealous of a small company making a success with the bands they considered also-rans?

Of course, we'll know what'll happen if Sanctuary is bought. There'll be a brief fanfare of publicity about how the label will continue to be a showcase for bright musical talent. Behind the scenes, they'll quietly knife the management, introduce a new regime that will put an end to the more esoteric output of the label, drop a few of the less well-performing bands, citing "amicable differences", and then in five years' time, the label will be little more than an EMI or Warner shell, at which point it will be wound up; the highest-selling bands moving to the major label, and all the others chucked out into the street.

Cynical? Me?