'Game of Thrones': the next series

SMALL PRINT:FANS OF Game of Thrones, the hit fantasy drama with endless Irish connections, are going to have to wait until spring, for the return of the HBO series that crosses Lord of the Ringswith The Sopranos. But that doesn't mean information can't be gleaned before then. The programme is currently being filmed in various locations, including, most recently, Co Antrim.

The television adaptation of George RR Martin's books, A Song of Ice and Fire, is eagerly anticipated, the first having wowed critics and fans alike. Aside from filming in Ireland, the programme also cast for the extras here, and several of its key actors are Irish – Conleth Hill, Aidan Gillen, Ian McElhinney, Derek Halligan and Jack Gleeson, to name a few.

The Irish company Screen Scene was employed to complete post-production on picture and sound for the first Game of Thronesseries, its visual-effects team producing 350 of the 688 effects shot for the series. The show received an Emmy nomination for outstanding special visual effects.

So what do we know so far?

For series two, more than 50 days of filming have been completed, much of it in Northern Ireland. Earlier this week, five people were injured near Ballintoy in north Co Antrim when winds from Hurricane Katia blew over a catering marquee.

While the sets are hard to access, sneaky glimpses of the filming have been leaked, with photographs of statues on the sand and in the surf of Downhill Beach in Co Antrim appearing to be the gods of Westeros. Photographs of several large brown tents on the north Antrim coast appear to show scenes involving the character Renly’s encampment, and the Cushendun Caves have also been used as a location.

Meanwhile, south of the border, spotting King Joffrey aka 'the little king' aka Jack Gleeson (left) has almost become a national sport among Game of Thronesnerds, with sightings of the Trinity student at Electric Picnic and the hip fried-chicken spot, CrackBird, on South William Street in Dublin.

Cliff's Law is music to the ears of big-name musicians . . . but not for the little guy

SHOULD IRISH musicians be celebrating or mourning a new EU directive on copyright? Last Monday, the EU Council voted to extend the copyright on sound recordings from 50 to 70 years. The change applies only to copyright on studio recordings, which are usually owned by the record labels, and does not affect the writers, who retain “death plus 70 years” copyright.

The directive has been nicknamed Cliff’s Law, because Cliff Richard was one of the main musicians lobbying the EU for the extension. Big names such as Mick Jagger are happy because their well-known work isn’t, after 50 years, “free” and in the public domain, thus reducing its value. Less famous musicians, however, are unhappy that their work has been “locked in” for another 20 years, and that they cannot exploit it or promote it for themselves.

If the copyright hadn’t been extended to 70 years, well-known songs by The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and Cliff Richard would, over the next few years, have entered the public domain, meaning anyone could have pressed and sold their own Beatles or Stones album. For the labels who own those albums, it means 20 more years of royalty payments.

But those opposing the copyright extension say it is damaging to a country’s culture, keeping well-known songs off-limits for use in school plays, theatre performances etc without an often prohibitive payment being made. And the lesser know musical artist can suffer financially from the extension.

It’s a complex area, but in a nutshell: if a singer or instrumentalist (ignore song writing – that’s in a different copyright category) records an album with a record company, the label now owns that recording for 70 years (up from 50). This means the label can release it when it wants, re-release it as many times as it wants, or never release it and leave a musician’s work languishing in a basement without said musician being able to do anything about it for the period of the copyright.

A lesser-known musician who recorded an album for a label in, for example, 1962 would have expected the rights to the recording of their album to have expired next year. After that, they could have pressed the album themselves and done their own promotion and marketing — or even just sold it at their own gigs.

The Guardian reports the case of a 1958 album, Kenny Graham’s Moondog and Suncat Suite. The label involved made little of the album initially. But once it fell out of copyright in 2008 (under the old 50-year rule), somebody released it, and a song from the album was used on a TV ad for chocolate. Graham’s daughter has now been able to retire from her job and take up gardening full-time because she received the money due from the TV ad.

Musicians planned their careers and pension around a 50-year copyright rule that has now been extended by 20 years: if your name isn’t Cliff Richard, Mick Jagger or Paul McCartney, this new EU directive may not work in your favour.