The BPI came up with the conceit of using online polling shop YouGov to ask consumers whether they thought UK recording artists "should be protected for the same number of years as their American counterparts".

Predictably, 62 per cent said yes.

As well as posing a patriotically loaded question, the BPI also tugged on respondents' heart-strings by fingering the artist as the beneficiary of copyright extension. In reality, songwriters already have a 70 year copyright - that is the length of their lifetime plus 70 years; the 50-year rule applies to recording owners like, er, the BPI's major label donors.