News

Brussels – 13 December 2018 – GESAC welcomes the political agreement reached this morning at the trialogue meeting on the Broadcasting Directive (also known as the SatCab file).

The Council discussions have been long and at times quite difficult on many different issues. GESAC respectfully acknowledges all the efforts of those Member States that have tried to keep the main objective of this legislative initiative, that is to provide a better position for creators and the creative sector vis-à-vis the giant platforms. Such platform services grow at the expense of creators by knowingly and ruthlessly benefitting from the vagueness of the current law as regards their copyright-relevant acts.

The Legal Affairs committee confirms that big UUC platforms need to comply with authors’ rights

20/06/2018 – Today in Brussels, the JURI Committee voted on the long-discussed Copyright Directive and adopted Article 13 with a clear majority. The European Grouping of Societies of Authors and Composers (GESAC) welcomes this result, which is an important step towards ending the big platforms’ free riding.

YouTube’s campaign against Article 13 of the Copyright Directive shows a lack of respect for the EU democratic process of law making. The revisions to the Directive have been under discussion for over four years already and the three main institutions of the European Union have all given their position. The Commission, Council and Parliament have all reached the same conclusion, that there is a value gap, also referred to as a transfer of value, where user upload services are making vast sums of money on creators’ content uploaded by their users, but not paying the right holders who own that content fairly. The result is a serious distortion in the European digital market place which harms right holders, other digital services and citizens. To correct that situation, platforms like YouTube should have to take responsibility for the content they use and monetise, by fairly remunerating their creators and right holders.