February 11, 2019

IFPI, together with a group of rights holders representing the audiovisual, broadcasting and sports industries, has written to European negotiators about the Copyright Directive, saying that it fails to meet its original objectives and risks leaving European rights holders worse off.

The authors of the letter say that the key aims of the original draft Directive were to create a level playing field in the online Digital Single Market and strengthen the ability of European rights holders to create and invest in new and diverse content across Europe.

The authors of the letter say that despite their “constant commitment” in the last two years to finding a viable solution, and having proposed many positive alternatives, the text, as currently drafted and on the table, no longer meets these objectives, not only in respect of any one article, but as a whole. “As rights holders we are not able to support it or the impact it will have on the European creative sector”, the letter states.

Whilst the authors of the letter appreciate the efforts made by several parties to attempt to achieve a good compromise in the long negotiations of recent months, the outcome of the negotiations in several of the Council discussions has been to produce a text that contains elements which “fundamentally go against copyright principles enshrined in EU and international copyright law”.

The letter says that, far from levelling the playing field, the proposed approach “would cause serious harm by not only failing to meet its objectives, but actually risking leaving European producers, distributors and creators worse off”.

Regrettably, the letter states, under these conditions “we would rather have no Directive at all than a bad Directive. We therefore call on negotiators to not proceed on the basis of the latest proposals from the Council”. To read the letter in full as published on IFPI’s website, click here.