EU Commission Proposal on the Collective Rights Management Directive
10 December 2012
Contributions
This paper only deals with titles I, II, IV and V addressing all collective management organisations (CMOs). SAA will therefore not comment on title III on the online multi-territorial licensing of musical works.
The SAA is positive on European regulation of collective rights management which pursues governance, accountability and transparency objectives. This is an opportunity to create a level playing field in Europe and contribute to enhancing trust and confidence in CMOs. The SAA is committed to working with the Commission, the European Parliament and the Council to achieve these objectives.
The Commission’s proposal as it stands today falls short of reaching these objectives: drafted in the absence of any consultation with audiovisual authors’ societies, it is very much inspired by music and does not take into account the great diversity of CMOs in Europe serving different rightholders in different sectors and administering models other than voluntary collective management. It also ignores existing monitoring and supervision mechanisms at national level that pursue the same objectives.
The Commission’s proposal therefore raises serious concern as to the respect of the cultural diversity, proportionality and subsidiarity principles. The above-mentioned concerns add to an overly detailed approach to the internal functioning of CMOs as well as transparency criteria and tools that neither leave room for national level implementation nor for other practices pursuing the same objectives.
The SAA therefore suggests clarifying the objectives of the regulation and proceeding with a thorough examination of the proposed provisions in light of the proportionality and subsidiarity principles. This should lead to more focused provisions, in particular on the organisation and governance of CMOs and on transparency to give CMOs and Member States more flexibility on the approaches and tools they can use to fulfil the directive’s objectives.
This document makes concrete proposals on the different chapters of the text to achieve this objective of a better balance. It also suggests enlarging the scope of the text to include obligations on users and to cover all entities engaged in collective rights management activities in the EU (independently of their country of establishment) and commercial entities that compete with traditional CMOs. This would at least ensure fair competition, proper information and transparency to all rightholders.
Download the full commentary from the SAA.