Brussels, 09/07/2013 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 9 July, members of the European Parliament's legal committee adopted amendments to the proposal on collective management of copyright and related rights and multi-territorial licensing of rights in musical works for online uses in the internal market. The report by Marielle Gallo (EPP, France) on this issue was unanimously adopted by 22 votes in favour, 0 against and 0 abstentions.
The legislation aims to allow online music service providers easier access to licensing, and royalties to be more rapidly collected by artists. The report was described by the S&D Group at the EP as balanced.
“This is the first time that we in Parliament, from the British Conservatives to the Pirate Party, have reached consensus on copyright which is normally a highly sensitive matter”, Gallo, the rapporteur, said with delight. She thus obtained her mandate for negotiation with the member states. The proposal supported by the committee aims to simplify the obtaining of licences by online music service providers. It also seeks to improve the protection of authors' rights by making sure that royalties are collected more efficiently from service providers and distributed to artists more fairly and more quickly, a press release reports.
The proposal for a directive, adopted by the Commission in July 2012, seeks to encourage the creation of European online music service content and to boost sales. In future, rather than dealing with collective management organisations in each EU member state, service providers could obtain licences from a small number of such organisations operating across EU borders. MEPs also adopted an amendment aimed at ensuring that the smaller and less popular repertoires also have access to the market by requiring these collecting organisations to issue licences under the same conditions for all repertoires. It was important that this last point should be confirmed, in the view of representatives of composer-authors in the EU, like GESAC.
Regarding the chapter on adequate remuneration of artists, within the time allotted, MEPs cut the deadline for paying right holders from 12 to 3 months from the end of the financial year in which the right revenue was collected. Another amendment will allow artists to choose their management company and to take part in the decision-making process more easily.
Françoise Castex, who is rapporteur for the S&D Group, however, bemoans in a press release that, although the text confirms the non-lucrative status of the collective management companies and promotes new requirements of transparency and governance for the management of authors' rights, it misses the opportunity to give power back to the artists by fully putting back the general assembly at the heart of the system for redistribution of loyalties. The Socialist MEP underlines: “Marielle Gallo's proposal to bring agents and lawyers to the general assemblies is revealing of the very special kind of management company that she is proposing, a model where only authors and composers, who have significant financial means, may enhance their interests within the general assembly. A model where the collective spirit and solidarity no longer exist and where the richest of the right holders would become even richer”. Castex said Gallo has given too much to the liberals and pirates that are “hostile to the very model of collective management” (our translation throughout). (SP/transl.jl)