After a UK government-led commission said that the current 50-year term for musical copyrights was fine, and the government last year publicly agreed that there was no need to extend the term, culture minister Andy Burnham yesterday made the logical follow-up announcement that yes, the government would now push for a 20-year extension on copyright. Turns out, it's the moral thing to do.

Actually, by framing the issue as a "moral case," Burnham gets to sidestep the entire issue of logic. Critics have already begun to charge that he is ignoring actual evidence and the well-regarded conclusions of the Gowers Report, not to mention previous government policy. But when the issue becomes a moral one and the livelihood of aging performers is at stake, it's suddenly easier to avoid cost/benefit analysis. Doing the right thing isn't always logical or economical.

The rather bitter irony here is that the move has been pushed largely by fabulously wealthy musicians and the music industry. In July 2007, when the government said that 50 years of copyright on songs was plenty of time to cash in, the head of the international music trade group IFPI warned, "Some of the greatest works of British music will soon be taken away from the artists who performed them and the companies that invested in them. Extending copyright term would promote vital investment in young talent and new music, all of which will help to secure the UK's future as an exciting music market."

The extension has been most vocally backed by musicians like Cliff Richard, whose 1958 hit "Move It!" is just about to enter the public domain. (We're not sure it helps Cliff's cause when the first picture you see on his official website is Sir Cliff standing before the gates of what is, presumably, his mansion).

Several arguments have been made for extension: creators have a moral right to compensation for their work throughout their lives, at least, and 50 years is no longer enough. In addition, as seen above in the IFPI comments, it will encourage innovation going forward. This second argument doesn't quite jibe with the first; if the issue is future innovation, why would the UK need retroactive extension when the creators have already done their creating under the regime in place at the time? Clearly, 50 years wasn't so short that The Beatles said, "Screw it! We're going into law."

In any event, a push for term extension is being made across Europe. While the UK says it will work to extend musical copyright from 50 to 70 years, the European Union is considering a plan (backed by Commissioner Charlie McCreevy) to extend musical copyrights to 95 years.

The life-of-the-artist morality line (probably the best argument for extension) basically goes out the window at this point unless the law is meant to cover five-year-old singers who survive until 100. And though I'd quite like to meet such a person and am sure that somewhere such a figure exists, it hardly seems worth crafting law around such extreme outliers.

European academics agree. In what is becoming a bit of a trend, the EU is also ignoring the evidence-based studies that it commissioned on the subject, preferring instead to push its rulemaking with talk of old musicians—who apparently have never heard of savings accounts, retirement planning, or existing social assistance—sleeping in the streets.

The push for extension has enraged numerous prominent academics who study intellectual property, including the man who wrote a report on the issue of extension for the EU. Dr. P. Bernt Hugenholtz of the University of Amsterdam has said that the entire process "seems to reveal an intention to mislead the council and the Parliament, as well as the citizens of the European Union. In doing so the Commission reinforces the suspicion, already widely held by the public at large, that its policies are less the product of a rational decision-making process than of lobbying by stakeholders."

In both the UK and EU cases, the worry is that most of the money will actually go to labels and to the richest artists like Sir Cliff. The Open Rights Group, which is bitterly opposed to extension, claims that 80 percent of all artists would receive under €30/year from the EU plan, while music labels would share 90 percent of the cash coming in.