EU’s Kroes Calls For New Thinking On Copyright System

Neelie Kroes, vice-president of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda, has issued a call for new thinking beyond old business models as a way to incentivize creativity in Europe.

“It’s not about copyright,” she said in remarks at the Forum d’Avignon, France. She gave examples of “rigid legislation from the pre-digital era” that needs to change, and said the vast majority of artists whose work is handled by Europe’s biggest collecting society do not make a living wage.

“There are many new ideas out there – ideas, for example, like extended collective licensing as practised in Scandinavia, or other ideas that seek to both legitimise and monetise certain uses of works,” she said. “Are these ideas the right ones to achieve our goals? I don’t know. But too often we can’t even try them out because of some old set of rules made for a different age – whether it is the Berne Convention, the legislation exceptions and limitations on the VAT Directive or some other current law. So new ideas which could benefit artists are killed before they can show their merit, dead on arrival. This needs to change.”

Kroes’ 19 November speech is here.