"You wouldn't steal a car, you wouldn't steal a handbag, you wouldn't steal a television, you wouldn't steal a movie. Downloading pirated films is stealing, stealing is against the law, PIRACY IT'S A CRIME"

The Portability Regulation agreement represents a mixed result for collective management organisations for screenwriters and directors: positive as it represents a bonus for consumers which will enable EU residents to travel across Europe with continued access to their subscription services, negative as the final agreement contains holes that risk opening up the Regulation to abuse and eroding the territorial licensing system that underpins the financing of the European audiovisual sector.

The first copyright proposal of the European Commission is a Regulation to enable temporary access to subscription services from your home country while travelling in Europe.

Screenwriters and directors from Belgium (Lucas Belvaux), Denmark (Annette Olesen), France (Dante Desarthe, Michel Hazanavicius, Eric Lartigau, Jean-Paul Salomé), Germany (SAA patron Fred Breinersdorfer) and Poland (Dariusz Jablonski) were invited by European Commission Vice-President Andrus Ansip on Friday 13th November to exchange views on how best the Commission can help the film industry to make the most of the opportunities offered by the Digital Single Market.

Since the beginning of this new Commission a year ago, copyright has been a contentious issue.

On 23rd March 2015 SAA launched its White Paper on audiovisual authors’ rights and remuneration.  You can see a summary video of the whole event and hear Roger Michel, Bertrand Tavernier and Jochen Greve share their thoughts in the videos below.

We are Europeans. We are authors. We are consumers. We are story tellers whose works tell the tales of our continent.  We are here to help write the story of Europe’s future, a bright future. We are characters in it. We want it to be a classic and source of inspiration for future generations. We are Europeans, surprised to be a key storyline.

Last year I wrote in the German press about the frustration of seeing unlicensed copies of my work freely available and easy to find on the internet and the absence of legal services delivering the full range of European films I would expect.  I wanted to be provocative to strike the contrast between my expectations and the market delivery, but I also wanted to show that there are possible solutions.  I suggested creating compulsory licences for European audiovisual works.

German screenwriter and SAA patron, Fred Breinersdorfer, to speak at European Voice Copyright 2015 conference and underline the need for authors interests to also be part of the discussions on copyright reform and cross-border access.

Think of Europe as a patchwork quilt. One, single quilt made of patches of different shapes and sizes.