Brussels, 04/05/2016 (Agence Europe) - Consumers support extension of the country of origin principle to online services while rights holders and collective management organisations oppose any such move, reveal the responses, published by the European Commission on Wednesday 4 May, to the public consultation on review of the satellite and cable directive.
Directive 93/83/EEC makes cross-border broadcasting of audiovisual programmes easier, in particular television and radio broadcasting by satellite and cable retransmission. The Commission has, for a number of years, been considering whether these provisions should be extended to internet-based content (the internet was in its early infancy when the text was adopted in 1993).
The Commission, then, held a public consultation between 24 August and 16 November 2015, the results of which have just been published in a summary of the 257 submissions received. The main question was on the need to extend the country of origin principle. By virtue of this principle, the copyright applicable to radio broadcasting by satellite is only to be paid in the country of origin of the broadcast and not in the countries receiving the signal.
Not surprisingly, consumers' organisations, public service broadcasters and internet services providers backed extension whereas rights holders and collective management organisations opposed it. The latter groups argue that such a move would de facto lead to pan-European licences and would, thus, restrict their ability to grant rights licences on a territorial basis.
More generally, the document published by the Commission indicates that “the majority of respondents consider that the Directive has facilitated the clearance of rights for the simultaneous retransmission by cable of programmes broadcast from other Member States and has helped consumers to have more access to broadcasting services across borders”. It also indicates that, apart from for public broadcasters, the current mediation system, supposed to facilitate negotiations, is not relevant and should not be extended to online services.
On the same day, the Commission published a synopsis report of the results of the public consultation on the review on wholesale roaming markets, fair use policy and the sustainability mechanism referred to in Roaming Regulation 531/2012 as amended by Regulation 2015/2120. According to this report, a large majority of respondents are of the view that EU-wide wholesale roaming caps are the most appropriate regulatory approach to enable removal of international roaming charges (“roam-like-at-home” - RLAH), although views differ on the said caps. In addition, a widespread call came from operators for further harmonisation of mobile termination rates, in addition to the roaming regulation, in order to enable RLAH for voice.
The reports are available at: http://urlz.fr/3vfb and http://urlz.fr/3vfa (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)