When Andrew Gowers published his recent report into the future of copyright law in the UK, it appeared alongside an economic analysis of the effects of extending copyright protection beyond its current 50-year term for music recordings. A work of beautiful understatement, it examines and demolishes the flimsy, self-serving case for lengthening the monopoly, put forward by the record industry.

The report, conducted by Cambridge University’s Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law, concludes that it "would be particularly inadvisable, given our present state of knowledge, for a rational policy-maker to extend the term of copyright in sound recordings."

The response of the labels is to suggest that Gowers merely provides a starting point. "The seemingly simplistic judgment behind [this recommendation] seems to point to AIM’s cautious lack of high expectations being well founded," the Association of Independent Music, which represents the record industry, said in a statement. "The Gowers Review is patently not conclusive in its reasoning, its element of issue-avoidance or its wholly negative recommendations in terms of copyright extension."

In other words, we hedged our bets in the beginning, and while the report could have settled the argument once and for all by agreeing with us, instead it decided to oppose us and is therefore both simplistic and inconclusive.

But hang on. The study estimated that extending copyright protection would increase the record industry’s profits by at most £160 million, or 2 per cent of current profits. Assuming that the record labels have similarly smart economists on their payrolls, they must know that they are courting a lot of adverse publicity to play for, relatively speaking, peanuts. So why are they still fighting? What are they afraid of?

They are afraid of losing control.

Once music falls out of copyright, it can be reissued, remixed and redistributed in an outburst of economic and creative activity, unfettered by the record companies. This will eviscerate their assertions that copyright holder ownership is in the best interests of music and consumers.

AIM, among other industry bodies, is arguing for a levy on blank media to compensate the record labels for losses caused by illegal copying. Such a charge has to be levied on all media without discrimination, and as more music is freed from copyright and made available for legitimate copying, the less justifiable such a tax is.

More freed music also waters down the argument that all content to be protected. Microsoft's new Zune player applies DRM to files transferred from one Zune to another – even if the music is free of copyright, or even licensed in a way which forbids such controls. Similarly, if a significant proportion of music is freed, they can't argue that all file-sharing networks are criminal in intent.

Like toll collectors through the ages, the record labels fear a loss of income resulting from a loss of monopoly. Their we-define-your-rights, pay-per-use, DRM-encrusted vision relies on a group of companies that owns most of what's popular agreeing to tax consumers in the same way. But the deal their predecessors struck with the public half a century ago is coming back to haunt them. The monopoly is ending, and the music's getting out of control.

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