Benny Anderson, Charles Aznavour, Pedro Almodovar, James Blunt, Miguel Bose, Patrick Doyle, Bryan Ferry, Robin Gibb, David Gilmour, Julio Iglesias, Maurice Jarre, Mark Knopfler, Michel Legrand, Paco de Lucia, Sir Paul McCartney, Enio Morricone, Nicoal Piovani, Sade, Alejandro Sanz, Caetano Veloso, Gabriel Yared… are among the numerous artists and creators who recently appealed to the European Commission President José Manuel Barroso to express their deep concerns about a possible unfavourable decision on pan-European licensing of music.
In a meeting with the cabinet of EC President Barroso (on July 3rd at 9:00am) and in a public declaration read today at a press conference (July 3rd at 10:30am), Robin Gibb, Patrick Doyle, Laurent Petitgirard and David Ferguson – on behalf of the European Composer and Songwriter Alliance (ECSA) and the entire creative community – reiterated their call to EC President:
“It is here Mr Barroso that we need political leadership. Hundreds of thousands of small and medium size businesses, both writers and publishers, are likely to be wiped away without your help. We believe this will be a lasting disaster for all Europeans, culturally, socially and economically. We urge you to take a pause at this point and to bring together parties including […] us, the Authors, to formulate a positive way forward for the role creativity and music in a digital Europe.”
Creators have been informed that the European Commission is considering issuing a decision finding an infringement in the CISAC competition case on multi-territorial licensing of music rights for online, satellite and cable (2006 Statement of Objections).
“DG Competition perceives competition as the sole solution to every problem and try to prejudicially brand the authors’ societies as ‘monopolies.’ If, as the DG Competition is appearing to suggest, the Societies are required to ‘compete’ with one another across national boundaries on price, the whole system will collapse. Major rights holders will withdraw their repertoires and either place them with an agency […] or they will look towards direct licensing themselves.”
If confirmed by the Commission, a decision adverse to the interests of creators and their societies would have nothing but negative consequences from all perspectives and bring no benefit to the development of the online market:
– For creators – It would lead to drastic reduction in the income of millions of creators worldwide, thus preventing most of them from earning a living from their work. Competition between authors’ societies for users on price would result in a race to the bottom on copyright royalties’ value (the European repertoire being licensed by the society offering the cheapest royalty remuneration).
– For users (online service providers, broadcasters…) – It would result in a further fragmentation of the repertoire and create a confusion and legal uncertainty for users on all present and future licensing deals for online, cable and satellite use of musical works.
– For the public – It would reduce consumers’ access to music and culture in general, and further increase piracy.
– For authors’ societies – It would weaken their ability to represent and defend creators and to negotiate fair remuneration for the use of their works.
– For the European online market – It would do major damage to European cultural policy and severely reduce the ability for Europe to produce cultural goods of any value in the international market.
“Authors’ societies, their publisher and creator members, and music users, with the full encouragement and support of the European Commission, have been striving over recent years to adapt to the demand of the online environment for licences covering several countries. This involves a fundamental change to the territorial basis on which creators’ rights have been traditionally organised and managed. A number of significant changes have already taken place and the process of evolution is already well under way. This should be allowed to continue in as orderly a fashion as possible as those directly involved in the business of licensing music are best placed to develop a solid and sustainable foundation for the new online music market” as British creators explained in their letter to President Barroso.
Source: ECSA
Kimberly Chow reports for The Associated Press, “The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, is close to finishing an antitrust investigation into how royalties are collected. The outcome might help large music retailers like Apple Inc.’s iTunes sell from one store across Europe, rather than different stores with different products in each of the 27 EU nations.”
“Currently, there are separate licensing managers in each of the 27 EU nations, leading to a highly fragmented market and causing European online music sales to lag behind those in the United States,” Chow reports.
“The EU has been at pains to create a Europe-wide copyright and licensing system for online music to make it easier and cheaper for commercial users to buy rights,” Chow reports. “Under the current setup, commercial users — satellite or cable broadcasters and Internet sites — that want to buy rights to music must get a license from each national collection agency. Because of the complexities, companies don’t bother getting licenses for every market, so not all online music is available equally across the EU.”
Full article here.
A little bit more paperwork the old way and it works.
Using their new idea, then North America should just have one North American-wide copyright and licensing system.
Put Mexico, USA and Canada in one contract?
Yeah right. Greedy politicians, that’s all it is.
I don’t get it. Some music may not be available in some countries because the labels don’t wait to spend the resources negotiating access.
The probable reason why artists are against this is that pricing is higher for some countries vs. others. They are concerned that revenue will decrease as a result.
What they have not considered is that the overhead that the labels charge for managing the current scenario is costing them in revenue too.
Simple is better and transparency in the business will lead to a fairer deal for consumers and artists alike.
Consumers HAVE to understand that if they always urge for cheaper consuming, they only will have shit left in their basket!
Whiners. The whole point of the EU is that Germany, France, Belgium and the rest are economically linked more like American states than individual countries. If a bunch of small, inefficient businesses get wiped away by greedy oligopolies, well, isn’t that what Brussels wants? Dumb fucks, should have thought about this 10 years ago, now the Eurocrats are shoving it down their throats whether they like or not.
Europe’s recording industry wants a complicated bureaucracy burdened pricing format. Well there’s a fraking surprise?
Is is me or are all of ECSA’s talking points completely backwards???
-H
Typical Music Industry Double, Triple and Quadruply dipping into the performers’ and customers’ pockets.
The Music Industry doesn’t just need a Pan European Online Licensing what the Industry should be made to do is World licensing of online music sales. After all the internet has no borders and requires no passport. This would benefit everyone! And the WTO could ensure the license fees for pay to the correct accounts and they could see to it that indie artists were also paid.
Correct HMCIV.
If government is involved, follow the money.
“We’re from the government, we are here to help you save money.”
Never happened in the USA. Just look ad the Medicaid mess.
Now they want to drop the age limit to people in their 50s for it. They can’t get socialized health care voted in, so they are going to drop the age limit little by little for Medicaid until one day, most of Americans are one it, then poof, we have socialized health care that’s just as good as Canada’s!
Then it’s time to exercise you 2nd amendment right and visit the federal government.
You don’t want socialized health care that is just as good as Canada’s.
In Canada you wait in line. Sometimes you die waiting in line.
If you are rich enough you fly down to the USA and turn that 1 to 2 year wait, worst case cenario, into a 1 to 2 hour wait.
If I ever need a hip replacement, I won’t be waiting months and months when a new hip is just a 2 hour flight away.
You Americans should be careful what you wish for. Rationed Healthcare is sometimes no better than no healthcare at all.
I for 100% agree with HMCIV.
BBC America is running its “One World” promotion. Guess that doesn’t apply to creative efforts, huh?
MW “truth”.
Aint it, though.
Hey Big Al, you should qualify that statement, cause insofar as I know it is only Americans that die waiting in our lines and usually from severe frostbite when their hot air supplies run out, which surprisingly doesn’t take that long.
The local monopolies only benefit the local bureaucrats who manage them–they don’t even benefit the artists, who would make up in European-wide volume what they currently gain in higher local prices. Too bad the local monopolies’ con artist bureaucrats have managed to fool the dumb artists into fighting this. Oh, and what about consumer benefits? The spin that this would harm consumers is such transparent BS…
Demon: “The Music Industry doesn’t just need a Pan European Online Licensing what the Industry should be made to do is World licensing of online music sales.”
I 100% agree. I like the pan-EU idea only in that it gets us 1 step closer to this goal.
Think: “Put Mexico, USA and Canada in one contract?
Yeah right. Greedy politicians, that’s all it is.”
No, put Mexico, USA, Canada, Spain, South Africa, Ecuador, India, Pakistan, Australia, Philippines, Japan, China, Russia, Bolivia, Sudan, Egypt….
..the entire world in one licensing scheme so we can have a full global system to distribute music and video content.
This is not about greedy politicians this is about what’s best for consumers.
You know.. the people who actually PAY for this stuff?
Yeah, they matter.
Publishers and producers are NOTHING without consumers.
It’s time consumers mattered here.
twilightmoon: Publishers and producers are NOTHING without consumers.
Well… the industry has been trying hard for years to convince us that it’s actually the other way around…!
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