Brussels, 14/02/2008 (Agence Europe) - “I am relaunching today a consultation process on copyright levies. These are the levies which are applied in 24 member states to compensate rights-holders from losses accruing due to private copying of protected works”, Charlie McCreevy said on Thursday 14 February. This subject is a real minefield for the European internal market commissioner who was unable, in December 2006, to impose a non-binding recommendation on this explosive theme (see EUROPE 9327). Cautiously, he assured that his objective was not to bring the existence of Directive 2001/29/EC into doubt. “I have no intention of proposing a change to this legislation”, he stressed. A specific public hearing will be held in June.
The system in question authorises the copying of audiovisual works while imposing, in exchange, levies on items such as printers, hard disks, MP3 players, blank CDs, mobile phones, etc, paid back to the authors through the collective rights management companies to which they belong. “There is little coherence between member states as to how they apply these levies, or the level of the levies”, Mr McCreevy noted. Such a situation, the music industry says, could create competition distortion between member states. Open until 18 April, the Commission's public consultation aims to collect ideas on how to best “relate the level of levies to the loss suffered through private copying”, the commissioner added. He gave the example of a computer printer in one member state which had a levy of €70 imposed on it. He said levies on a 4 gigabyte MP3 player range from zero in one member state to over €15 in another. On the question of harmonisation of the rules on the type of products taxed and/or the level of levies, Mr McCreevy preferred to await the results of the consultation before taking a stance. For further information: http: //ec.europa.eu/internal_market/copyright/levy_reform/index_en.htm (M.B)