Slashdot Mirror
EU-wide Music Licensing Policies Published
www-xenu-dot-net writes "To stimulate the online music business in Europe,
EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy is recommending the elimination of territorial restrictions on the licensing and copyright enforcement of online music. Until now, so called licensing collection societies have enjoyed monopolies within their countries. (For online sales, the collecting societies typically charge 12 percent of the retail price today, compared to 9 percent on CDs.) EU Socialist Group leader Martin Schulz has called Mr McCreevy a "loose cannon whose arrogant opinions have provoked anti-EU feeling across Europe." That impression might not change with the new recommendation, as collecting societies in smaller European countries fear that they will lose out to larger rivals, potentially restricting the development of new music."
wow, two links that have nothing to do with the music.
was this item submitted by some random topic generator?
I won't take the obvious route here and say "w00t! fr33 p1r4cY 4 411!"
This is good policy, because if the EU is to be taken seriously as a single bloc trading partner, then it must present a standardized set of laws and regulations so that it isn't just a loosely bound bunch of states. By unifying the law under a single EU regulating entity, they effectively present themselves as one country.
While this may hurt certain groups within the borders of the EU, the EU was never supposed to be about individual states or particular companies. It was meant to unify Europe into a large trading bloc that would rival the U.S. in trading and negotiating power.
This is exactly what the EU should be doing.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Italy's 'SIAE' group are a bunch of thieving bastards who do much to detriment musical culture in this country.
It cost us something like 150 Euro in taxes just to have a duo play for a few hours at our wedding! To add insult to injury, because our wedding reception was in a different province, we *had to go to the office of these thieving bastards in that province* (open from like 10-12 on certain days) - we couldn't even pay their larcenous fees in our home town.
The taxes are so high that young, aspiring musicians like my wife's brother, who certainly isn't in it for the money at this point in his life, has trouble finding places to play because it's just too expensive in terms of taxes for everyone concerned.
Not only that, but these rats have successfully campaigned to tax the sale of blank CD's, "because they're all used for piracy anyway, right?".
What a bunch of despicable individuals.
Yes, I'm bitter and I just thought I'd get that off my chest.
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
You aren't meant to click on the links or attempt to visit the sites quoted in any way.
Noob
I believe the actual article that this is supposed to be pointing at it here.
I trust him about as far as a 3 year old child could throw him.
> collecting societies in smaller European countries fear
> that they will lose out to larger rivals, potentially
> restricting the development of new music
LOL... "new music" isn't dependent on collection societies. People driven by the desire to make art create 'new music'. Check out Jamendo or the podsafe stuff or Staccato for tons of great stuff outside the 'business'.
In Germany, there is the so-called GEMA (Gesellschaft für musikalische Aufführungs- und mechanische Vervielfältigungsrechte) [society for musicial performance and mechanical reproduction rights], which gets share of the prices on CDRs, music tapes... and the profit on Audio-CDs. The artists get their share of this money, no matter how often they've been copied or wheter it is still legal to copy a certain CD (Germany has made it illegal, not punishable, to circumvent technical copy restrictions...).
The problem is that this society is a) to expensive and b) far to complex for the small musician out on the streets to take advantage of. So, instead of getting money for being heard, he pays money for his own blank CDRs, while Sony etc keep getting the big shares.
On the other hand, that directive is really quite unsatisfacting, as it leaves holes for every big company to establish their own restrictioning system instead of making things easier and more reliable for both, listeners and creators.
---don't get bitten/r
As it is, in the UK the usual price is 99 pence, whereas on the mainland the usual price, so I hear, is 99 euro cents. For US readers, a euro is a little bit more than a dollar, while a pount is a lot more than a dollar.
We're getting ripped off out here, and that's contrary to the whole point of the single market. Nice to see something getting done about it.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
as collecting societies in smaller European countries fear that they will lose out to larger rivals, potentially restricting the development of new music.
Doesn't parse. For all I know, the amount of collected money that goes to new music, i.e. startup bands, young groups, etc. is so small that for all practical purposes you can treat it as being zero.
On the other hand, the amount that stays with the collecting societies to pay for "expanses" and "overhead" is considerable.
Sounds like someone seing his protection racket, uh, sorry, "business model" being washed away, nothing else.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
It sounds like the EU is going through the same problems the the US did when it tried a confederate system. When we figured out it wasn't going so well, we moved to a federal system. This is just another example.
Having a single copyright authority for Europe sounds like a good idea. Smaller countries need to realize that under unified economic policy, they will benifit from the wealth of the larger states more than they will suffer from less power.
The creation and playing of music won't suffer because you don't have your own licensing board, it will suffer if the fees associated with said process are so high that the common man can't afford them.
Burn Hollywood Burn
So, today, we have another piece of legislation -- written by the same arch-conservative people -- that seems to support big european businesses, at the expense of the 'consumers' and smaller EU firms. Big surprise.
As long as the top jobs in the EU are discreetly decided by powerful, rich white people in remote smoke-filled rooms, without any input by European citizens , that type of bullsh*t will continue. Get mad and get involved.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Milena Gabanelli's Report on Rai3 (one of those transmissions so good you wonder how much time before they get censored) once had 2 hours about SIAE.
Turned out, the tune getting the most money from SIAE in Italy is the background music of Onda Verde (traffic condition broadcast) on radio. If you never heard any music at all, that's because it's so low you cannot hear it. But you are paying for it, of course.
In Rome, there are some "musicians" who daily organise concerts where no one goes, only because they agree with SIAE that they are getting support for "cultural activities". It's basically your average white-collar mafia.
As a lot of things in Italy, thieves with the right contacts pull the strings and get rich doing nothing useful for society. This is the Italian development model after all. If you wondered, no, serious musicians don't get a penny. The 99 Posse said they never saw a penny coming from SIAE, even if they wrote a song,Curre curre guagliò, that is in the soundtrack of Gabriele Salvatores' Sud, that ran a few times on national TV. That might have to do with the fact that 99 are not exacly government-aligned.
If you don't like the way it works, pack up and leave. Serious, I did and never looked back—it's a panacea for your liver. But I'll take a trip to Stockholm to vote for Tonino anyway.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
AFAIK, this is already the case. I was under the impression that for the past couple of years the likes of record companies have been able to use collection societies from other EU member states. The whole point was to eliminate the monopolies that organisations like the MCPS/PRS have, and they were getting worried about losing business; I seem to remember one of the majors were going to defect to SABAM (Belgium).
Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals... except the weasel."
I'd be quite happy to get an EU-wide system though and I live in one of the countries you mentioned.
In Finland, if a musician want to get royalties on their music, they have to join Teosto. After you join, you waive the right to protect your rights to the organization and thus loose control over your own music. For example, the organization requires artists pay the royalties on their own productions if they want to distribute them for free over then Internet.
I have a couple friends who wanted to put MP3's of a couple songs that didn't make it to a CD to web to promote their new album but they couldn't do it since they would have had to pay Teosto for each download.
Teosto is also incredibly protective of the format in which you've purchased your music and was integral part in getting the new Finnish copyright law through which makes converting protected CD's to MP3 illegal. For non-protected music, they even try to get people to purchase a license to convert old recordings - DJ's are expected to pay 800 EUR / year for the privilege of converting old vinyls to CD's so they could play them in new joints that don't have an old-style record player.
And this is the organization which is supposed to protect the artist's rights! You don't get money if you don't join and if you do, they do a good job trying to protect you from yourself.
With this kind of organizations in control, I'd be happy to get a Europe-wide agency as it can't get _any_ worse than it is now and at least I'd be more likely to get a good selection of music to the local iTunes store.
"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid, it is true that most stupid people are conservative."