June 27, 2016

The ICMP writes that many online platforms pay little or no royalties to rights holders.  With the EU’s copyright reform looming, 58 MEPs have signed an open letter urging the European Commission to stop the transfer of value (value gap) from wreaking havoc with creators’ livelihoods.

The transfer of value is the mismatch between the value that certain digital platforms extract from music, and the value that is returned to rights holders.  According to the ICMP, it has skyrocketed in recent years due to the EU’s “lax regime towards online platforms”, which shields online platforms from liability when users upload copyright material without permission.

The letter reads: “Despite the fact that more creative content is being consumed today than ever before, on services such as user-uploaded content platforms and content aggregation services, the creative sectors have not seen a comparable increase in revenues from this increase in consumption.  The upcoming copyright reform should make clear that liability exemptions can only apply to genuinely neutral and passive online service providers, and not to services that play an active role in distributing, promoting and monetising content at the expense of creators”.

ICMP Director General, Coco Carmona, said: “For some time, we have been raising our concerns about how online platforms that use copyright-protected content to attract audiences for economic benefit are not fairly sharing the value generated with rights holders.  In fact, most of the time they are not sharing this value at all.  This situation has to change”.

The ICMP says that the transfer of value was highlighted in the recent Commission communication on online platforms and this letter sends a strong signal to the Commission of the political will to solve this urgent problem.

The ICMP also calls on the Commission to “keep the transfer of value high on the political agenda” and “not to give in to certain online platforms’ efforts to water down any initiative that would guarantee fairer conditions for rights holders everywhere”.  To read the ICMP’s press release in full, click here.