Société des Auteurs Audiovisuels
Society of Audiovisual Authors

SAA’s submission highlighted the following:

• There is no need to radically change the legal framework to develop pan-European online services. The current legal framework is not an obstacle to the development of these services. The main obstacles are economic, due to the lack of revenues from many territories in the absence of linguistic and cultural adaptations and of active marketing campaigns.

• It is of utmost importance that the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, in particular provision dedicated to the promotion of the production of and access to European works, is strictly and carefully implemented by all Member States. The presence and visibility of European works on all VOD platforms is essential to promote European works and build a culturally diverse European online market.

• SAA is willing to collaborate with ISPs with respect to consumer-friendly licences that offer tailored made services linked to specific uses and which fairly remunerate authors. Collective management of authors’ rights is needed to guarantee payment to authors.

• SAA is particularly pleased to see its proposal to create, at the European level, an unwaivable right to remuneration for the online exploitation of audiovisual authors’ works listed amongst the possible EU actions. Audiovisual authors should have a legal entitlement to receive remuneration for every use of their works. The unwaivable right to remuneration for audiovisual authors for their online rights should be based on the revenues generated by online exploitation and paid by the final commercial user (the online platform). The remuneration would be administered by collective management societies.