As I was sampling the delights of Coke with Orange yesterday, I didn't get around to talking about the Government surprisingly rejecting the extension of music recording copyright from the current 50 years to 70+. Good news, although expect the pressure from music companies to get even stronger as we approach the end of 2012.

The position of said companies is that allowing the copyright of these old recordings to lapse will prevent them from taking the money raised from selling these songs and using it to fund new talent, plus it will cut off a revenue stream for older artists. They're doing it for the kids and the pensioners! Who could possibly say no to that?

Of course, these same record companies seem to have an endemic problem in actually paying their artists. And perhaps, just perhaps, EMI are a little more worried about what will happen to their sales if you could suddenly buy a Beatles album for less than £9.99 than keeping Lily Allen afloat.

For the older artists who aren't Cliff Richard or Roger Daltrey (two of the loudest supporters of the copyright extension), this could hurt a bit. But if an item is in the public domain it doesn't mean that you can't sell it (after all, Penguin still sees the value in printing Shakespeare and Jane Austen, even though you can download them for nothing from Project Gutenberg). So, why can't Cliff Richard, or Lonnie Donegan's estate, for example, cut out the record companies altogether and produce their own collections of the material falling into the public domain? Produce your own liner notes, make a box-set, sell it online or get it into HMV and Borders, and you've got as much chance as seeing money as waiting for a multinational corporation to give your back catalogue a push.

Music copyright is a little bit more complicated than with books (because the music and lyrics fall under the standard life+70 years copyright of books, whereas the recording is only 50 years), so it could be useful for these things to be spelt out, perhaps on a cheap, cheerful, and yes, Web 2.0-ish platform that would become a clearinghouse for both information on selling public domain music and a repository for discovering what music recordings have fallen into the public domain.

Erm…so, who wants to provide funding? :)