News

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:

Today we’d like to share with you an article that has been prepared by the lawyers of our Dutch member BUMA on a very important case pending at the EU Court, formally known as the Court of Justice of the European Union.

The article analyses the questions that were posed to the Court in the preliminary ruling of case of Svensson/Retriever Sverige AB, which is specifically concerned withhow hyperlinking can play an important role in the unlicensed use of musical works. The analysis is supported by GESAC’s members.

GESAC follows all discussions related to the cloud with great attention and earlier this month took part in the Forum Europe Cloud Computing conference. The conference gathered European and international experts on cloud computing services as well as high level politicians from Europe and around the world.

One of the sessions was dedicated to copyright and its relation with cloud services. GESAC pointed out that for artists the cloud holds much promise. They have ever more access to markets that are geographically broader and more diverse than ever seemed possible: not only is this good for their careers, is it also good for their livelihoods as it offers greater opportunity for them to generate revenue for the use of their works.

Presented by CISAC, The World Creators Summit (formerly known as World Copyright Summit), will take place in Washington DC at the Ronald Reagan Building & International Trade Center on June 4 and 5, 2013 (with an opening cocktail party on June 3 evening). Now in its fourth edition, this biennial event aims at establishing a constructive dialogue, exchange ideas, debate diverse viewpoints and discuss the remedies linked to intellectual property and creative content online with all the stakeholders in the new digital economy, from creators, rights organizations and guilds, to content service providers, broadcasters, telecommunications operators, hardware manufacturers, legal experts and policy-makers.