Brussels, 23/10/2006 (Agence Europe) - Meeting within the alliance “Culture First”, film makers, composers, producers of audiovisual or musical works and their copyright management companies last week launched an appeal in favour of keeping the system for remuneration on the basis of private copy ownership. This system authorises private copy by imposing a tax as counterparty on blank supports (CD, DVD) and electronic equipment (MP3 players, etc) which are then paid back to the writers. The alliance is speaking out against the current “hold-up” by the producers of the electronic equipment and which has met with the disapproval of the European Commission. As a result of a consultation launched in June (see EUROPE 9218), the Commission is putting the finishing touches to a recommendation, which may be adopted in November. This recommendation is expected to favour an exemption for certain electronic equipment from this fee system and will promote new digital methods for the protection of rights.
“Without our work, what would anybody be copying?”, asked the French producer Bertrand Tavernier. He announced his “great concern at the attitude of the Commission towards private copy”, given that the fees system authorising this practice is “one of the fairest, most intelligent ways of offsetting the losses to authors”. “The Commission is going about its work without any dialogue with the writers, with arrogance and incompetence, crumbling to the lobbies” of producers of electronic goods, he said. “This is not only a tax, it is the writer's salary”, said Romanian artist Roman Vlad. In the view of Spanish singer Paloma San Basilio, “we must compensate the financial losses” brought about by the drop in sales of original discs. Decorated in 2005 with the Palme d'or of the Cannes festival for their film “L'enfant”, the brothers Dardenne criticised action on the part of lobbyists, aiming to “legalise this hold-up” and hoped that “the Commission would not be taken in by their games”. “We are not asking for privileges, but fair pay for our work”, they thundered.
Bernard Miyet, President of the European Group of Societies of Authors and Composers (GESAC), reduced the figures forwarded by the industry: the total sums collected in the EU under private copy was “560 million EUR in 2005”, nearly half the 950 million announced by the mass-market electronics lobby. He indicated that on average, 75% of this revenue went directly to the author and 25% was used to promote artistic activities, such as financing musical scenes..
Coming together in the movement “Copyright levies Reform Alliance”, the industry takes the view that the fees system penalises the consumer, who is taxed first of all on the purchase of the electronic appliance and then each time a work is downloaded. Considering that the system of fees on the basis of private copy is obsolete, it also proposes the use of “Digital Rights Management” (DRM) technologies, software allowing the use of a work to be controlled. However, “billions of works are not covered by DRM”, pointed out the French author and composer Yves Duteil who feels that the system is unfair. “DRM are instrumentalised to control Internet distribution, it is not a project based on virtue”, said Patrick Zelnik, the head of Naïve, a French independent music label.
Directive 2001/29/EC allows the Member States to implement a national system to remunerate authors under private copy. Currently, twenty States have done so. Malta and Luxembourg have exemptions under private copy but without a fee paying system. Cyprus, Ireland and the United Kingdom do not authorise private copy. (mb)