In a welcome departure from the recent trend of ever-lengthening copyright terms, the United Kingdom has declined to extend its copyright term beyond 50 years. Andrew Gowers, former head of Financial Times and chair of the committee looking into the proposed extension, said, "I could have made a case for reducing it based on the economic arguments. As it is, we left it in place rather than increasing it to 95 years as some of the music industry wanted and again, I think we steered a happy middle course rather than siding with one or other of the opposite poles of this debate."

So the economics pointed to a shorter term, but political realities made that impossible. Keep that in mind when we get our next copyright term extension battle here in the US!