On Wednesday, Andrew Gowers, former editor of this paper, will release a report commissioned by Gordon Brown, chancellor of the exchequer, to examine the UK’s intellectual property framework. One part of that report will address whether the copyright term for recordings in Britain should be extended from the current term of 50 years to 95. There is not much doubt about what it will say on this proposal. There is much more doubt about whether the government will follow the report’s sensible advice.

There is little doubt about what Mr Gowers will say because term extension is, as the late Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman once remarked, a “no-brainer”. You can see why by distinguishing between the prospective and retrospective aspects of term extension. Prospectively, the question is whether adding 45 years to the existing copyright term adds any additional incentives. Intuitively, you would think it would – 45 more years of royalties ought to matter to someone.