Playlouder MSP

Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Telecoms and Media, has made an important statement about the approach Europe will be taking towards the balance between consumers’ and creators’ interests and rights as the EU forms and delivers its digital policy over the next five years. It is very clearly in favour of the development of new content licensing and distribution models, even where rights owning industries have been themselves reluctant to come forward into the digital marketplace.

Playlouder MSP has been at the forefront of this movement for the last 6 years, working with the music industry and ISPs to develop a licensing and service model that can truly deliver the benefits of a networked digital economy to consumers and business alike. With support from the EU the promise looks closer than ever to being fulfilled.

This is a key excerpt:

It is necessary to penalise those who are breaking the law. But are there really enough attractive and consumer-friendly legal offers on the market? Does our present legal system for Intellectual Property Rights really live up to the expectations of the internet generation? Have we considered all alternative options to repression? Have we really looked at the issue through the eyes of a 16 year old? Or only from the perspective of law professors who grew up in the Gutenberg Age? In my view, growing internet piracy is a vote of no-confidence in existing business models and legal solutions. It should be a wake-up call for policy-makers.

If we do not, very quickly, make it easier and more consumer-friendly to access digital content, we could lose a whole generation as supporters of artistic creation and legal use of digital services. Economically, socially, and culturally, this would be a tragedy. It will therefore be my key priority to work, in cooperation with other Commissioners, on a simple, consumer-friendly legal framework for accessing digital content in Europe’s single market, while ensuring at the same time fair remuneration of creators. Digital Europe can only be built with content creators on board; and with the generation of digital natives as interested users and innovative consumers.

The full speech can be downloaded here: Vivianne Reding Speech, Brussels, July 9th 2009

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 9th, 2009 at 12:09 pm and is filed under Business, Industry, Music, Playlouder. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.