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Q&A with Véronique Desbrosses, General Manager of GESAC.

Next week the Collective Rights Management dossier will be voted on in the European Parliament’s JURI committee. Do you have a final message to give the committee members as they consider how they will vote?

We are pleased that the European Parliament has improved the text considerably. However, the tendency not to put creators at the centre of decision-making and to introduce very restrictive rules on the governance and day-to-day operation of author societies unfortunately endures. This is our main concern as this type of rules would, in most cases, go against the will of creators themselves would not be in line with the objectives of this Directive.

Take the example of undistributed royalties, for instance.  To re-cap, undistributed royalties are money that societies have collected on behalf of their members but which, due to insufficient information to identify relevant rightholders, cannot be distributed, notwithstanding societies’ best efforts.

Some amendments suggest that this money should be exclusively redistributed among known rights holders; others propose that the money should only be invested into social and cultural funds.

Our view is that it is up to creators and the general assembly of societies to decide.  It’s a message worth repeating that societies are made up of creators, so undistributed money is their property. It makes sense that they be the ones with the final say on this.

That’s of course not the only issue relating the directive but for other issues we’ll be in a better position to comment after the vote in the Legal Affairs Committee next week.

– EUR 46.9 million distributed to rights holders in Norway and abroad

(Oslo, 5 July 2013) TONO, the Norwegian performing rights society, recorded the organisation’s best ever result in 2012. Consequently EUR 46.9 million could be distributed to rights holders in Norway and abroad. Streaming services were the greatest growth-driver during the year.

TONO’s total operating revenues for 2012 came in at EUR 56,4 million, an increase of 6 per cent against the previous year’s figure of EUR 53.2 million which was also a 6 per cent increase compared to 2010.

“Revenues for 2012 were significantly up on the previous year. This is particularly pleasing because it shows that both consumers and music services consider music an attractive and valued commodity. It also shows that TONO is able to secure fair remunerations for music creators both in Norway and belonging to sister societies in other countries. At 130 per cent, year-on-year growth in the online sector was particularly exciting,” explains TONO CEO, Cato Strøm.

Here’s an interesting update: Three Europen author societies launch a licensing and processing hub to provide services across Europe.

PRS for Music (UK), STIM (Sweden) and GEMA (Germany) have today announced a major collaboration that will simplify both national and pan-European music rights licensing and processing.

Read the full press release.

The Council’s decision to exclude the audio-visual sector from the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership’s negotiating mandate has been followed by EC Commissioner De Gucht’s declaration that he is ready to discuss the issue with his American counterparts.

At this crucial time, it’s vital that Europe’s creative community keeps mobilised and speaks up about why the exclusion of audiovisual services is so important to them. That’s why the European Composer and Songwriter Alliance (ECSA) has launched a petition calling for the exclusion of  cultural and audio-visual services from any free trade negotiations with the US.

https://www.change.org/petitions/european-parliament-commission-council-exclude-culture-from-ttip-negotiation

This petition was launched on change.org. It’s easy to share and to add further initiators and partners. You can read the ECSA press release here.