Brussels, 08/01/2010 (Agence Europe) - Facilitated by the European Commission, a stakeholder platform including collecting societies, industry representatives and consumer representatives set up in July 2008 has been looking at modernisation of the system of private copy levies in Europe (see EUROPE 9670). The objective was to make mechanisms already in place develop in order to correspond more to the logic of the internal market in an increasingly digitalised world. On Thursday 7 January, the industry announced it was pulling out of the talks, visibly without informing the other stakeholders. “We are bitterly disappointed that a year and a half of talks have failed to deliver any concrete results or provide a way forward”, Bridget Cosgrave, Director General DigitalEurope, deplores in a press release on behalf of her group of national and multinational associations with members such as Apple, Microsoft, Mitsubishi and Sony. The digital industry above all deplores the inability of stakeholders to perfect a transparent mechanism at European level, based on specific European criteria, which would allow products subject to copy levy systems to be determined, and set out how much the levies should amount to. It accuses national companies responsible for collecting levies on behalf of authors of wanting to continue operating on a national basis. Convinced that a forum will not allow certain issues to be resolved, DigitalEurope calls on the European Commission to develop European draft legislation in the context of the debate on setting a single market in place for creative content (see EUROPE 10004).
The European Grouping of Societies of Authors and Composers (GESAC) expresses surprise, in a press release, at the industry's decision to abandon talks when “agreement on a number of issues was so close”. Such issues include “exemptions and refunds for cross-border movement of goods subject to levies, a regime for distance sales, the call for consistent product definition throughout the EU, etc.” Speaking of the “difficult but constructive” discussion, GESAC General Secretary Véronique Desbrosses said the substantial headway made in the talks should result in recommendations and a roadmap for future nine-month discussions on elements still outstanding. She dismissed the argument that collecting societies rejected out of hand discussion on a levy system within the internal market: between the current situation and the same levels of levy applying throughout the EU, there was room for discussion. “We don't want a uniform system,” she added. She said that historical reasons had brought the differences from one member state to another in the levels of levy on the same products and that, as long as operators were all treated the same, this situation did not pose any problems.
When asked on Friday 8 January, the Commission declined to give an official reaction to this issue. The only question was why the industry had taken such a decision just a few days before the hearings of Commissioners-designate. Some saw in it a change in the political agenda linked to the arrival of Neelie Kroes (Netherlands) at Digital Strategy and Michel Barnier (France) at Internal Market and Services.
The current system, put in place by Directive 2001/29/EC on copyright, allows private copying of audiovisual works while, to counter-balance this, imposing levies, to be set nationally, on new CDs, DVDs etc and/or electronic equipment, such as MP3 players, printers, mobile phones, hard discs, etc. These levies are then paid to the artists through their collecting societies. (M.B./transl.jl/rt)