My week: GESAC and its members attend IP Forum in Brussels

Already back from the Easter break, Véronique Desbrosses, General Manager, GESAC gives an update on some recent and upcoming highlights in her calendar.

Last week GESAC was involved in the last IP Forum conference, a platform set up by Marielle Gallo MEP to talk through pressing copyright issues affecting Europe’s economy and well-being. Can you tell us a bit about how GESAC was involved? What were the main outcomes of the event – were you pleased about them?

The last few weeks have been busy with various hearings on the Collective Rights Management Directive, but the IP Forum was one of the last chance for the European Parliament to hear from all interested parties – and for these stakeholders to get their point of view across.

Work on the Collective Rights Management proposal is now entering a new phase. Between now and the summer the CULTURE, INTA, IMCO and JURI Committees in the European Parliament will be working hard to pull together an opinion on the proposal, led by Marielle Gallo.  Her report will be voted on in the JURI committee on 9 July.

Amongst others, two issues on this piece of legislation are key for GESAC:

1)      Non- Applicability of the Services Directive

For Gesac, it’s clear that the Services Directive has no place in the CRM Directive for a very simple reason:  author societies are not mere service providers, and it’s therefore not wise to integrate the Services Directive into this law since the consequences of the application of this legislation on CRMs which can be far reaching, have not been assessed yet.

2) Exclusive Assignment of Rights

The exclusive assignment of rights is crucial for authors’ protection,  efficiency of collective rights management, and for aggregation of repertoire for the benefit of users. The preservation of the exclusive nature of the relation between rightholders and authors societies, which does not prevent from a high degree of flexibility for rightholders as regards management of their rights, is therefore welcome. We are happy that Marielle Gallo, rapporteur on the CRM Directive, shares our point of view on this issue.

What about the weeks to come: what’s in the agenda for you?

As I mentioned above, now is a busy time. In the weeks to come we will continue to have meetings with Members of the European Parliament on the Directive. Ensuring the best result possible for our members, Europe’s creators, from this piece of legislation will remain a priority for us in the months to come.

As well as this, we also have our General Assembly and Board of Directors meeting next week – two crucial get-togethers for ensuring alignment across the GESAC membership body.

Finally, we’ll be gearing up for a new round of Licenses for Europe meetings on the week starting 15th April. As I said last time, we’ve been heavily involved in all four working groups of Licenses for Europe so far, and we are committed to seeing the initiative go forward.