It has been an exciting week for a number of GESAC members, as negotiations between German member GEMA and YouTube finally paid off with a licensing agreement. On the same day, ICE, an online rights licensing hub for PRS (UK), STIM (Sweden), and GEMA (Germany), announced it had signed a licensing agreement with SoundCloud.
London, 08/11/2016 – At the International Council of Creators of Music (CIAM) which was held in London this year, Keith Donald, Chairman of Irish authors’ society IMRO, presented the findings of a new study on the US Copyright Act exemption 110(5)(B). The study quantifies that $44 million per year is lost to European rights holders, and should serve as a reminder that the exemption is in breach of the TRIPS agreements and was indeed ruled unlawful by the WTO in 2000.
The Instituto de Derecho de Autor (the Institute of Author’s Right) held a debate on 11 November in Madrid on the sharing of the value generated by cultural content online. It was the first debate of its kind since the Commission’s “copyright package” proposal was published on 14 September.
Jean-Noël tronc, CEO of French member Sacem, and Vice-President of the GESAC board, met with France’s President François Hollande and Senegal President Macky Sall among others at the 26th Summit of the Francophonie (or French-speaking communities).