Guest blog by Fran Nevrkla, Chairman and CEO of PPL and VPL in the United Kingdom:

Greetings from the other side of the pond -
where our national game is over every six balls, our public schools are
private, we call our hills downs and we let our musicians (and record
companies) lose the rights in their recordings during their lifetime. I'm sure
we'll continue our eccentricity in sport, education and our love of the
countryside but maybe, just maybe, we might change things for the better for
our musicians.

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It should be considered common sense but it's always nice to have hard data to back it up — strong IP rights lead to wealthier nations and higher standards of living. Much higher.

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Normally the Copyright Alliance is about celebrating all creators, but sometimes we single out an individual here or there. Naturally I'd like to give a shout-out to all of the Oscar winners from last night, but actually this blog is about a prolific novelist whose latest work "Freefall" has hit the New York Times Bestseller list.

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Please don't tell me you are justified in infringing an artist's rights because current business models keep you from doing a certain something you want to do.

If enough of you want to do that same thing, a business model will develop. If you find yourself alone, then it hardly seems reasonable that an artist should forfeit her rights to satisfy your particular quirk.

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Kudos to Microsoft for another educational effort on copyright. It has launched MyBytes, an interactive educational web site for teens, following the results of a depressing survey on the youth's attitude toward the rights of creators. According to reports, the survey found only 11% of teens understood the rules for legal downloading, and their main source of information was their parents. So I guess 89% of parents are confused.

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In a development that should be news to no one but welcomed by all, the Writers Guild of America East and West are returning to work after a 100-day strike. This is absolutely fantastic news. It's great for consumers, naturally, but it's also great for the copyright movement to have two groups under its tent working together again.

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Grammy-nominated
Platinum-selling singer/songwriter John Ondrasik, who writes and sings under
the pseudonym band name Five for Fighting, is announcing an exciting
milestone in his "CD For the Troops" project. The CD, a free music compilation
of hit songs, contributed by 13 major music artists, was released exclusively
for the 2.4 million active duty members of the U.S. Armed Services and for
military veterans around the world. It is available for download from the
Army & Air Force Exchange Service website (http://www.aafes.com/) for military
members and veterans with a valid military ID number, and today John announced
it has surpassed the 250,000 downloads mark.

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In our coalition we have — in no particular order — songwriters, filmmakers, graphic artists, business software designers, authors, photographers, performing artists, video game developers, newspaper and magazine publishers, and amateur and professional sports leagues. But this doesn't comprise the universe of copyright owners who benefit from their copyrights. Take lecturing genealogists, for example.

The lesson here? There is virtually no limit to the number of people benefited by copyright in virtually unlimited ways. Frustration with one aspect of copyright for one type of creator should never be addressed by undermining copyright itself.

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We've all seen people's slide shows of digital photos set to music. But is that music licensed?

It can be. A recent announcement explained how all of the major record labels have licensed songs to a Sequoia Media Group service that allows you to make DVDs with the popular music of your choice. From the release:

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Yes, piracy hurts artists who have made millions of dollars with their music. Can they afford to lose some? Well, it's not really my place to say, nor is it that of anyone else. But most creators are people we've never heard of, and we're less likely to hear of them if they're driven out of the business by a lack of respect for their property. It's true in the United States. It's true in Europe, where I just attended Midem. And it's true in Ghana.

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