IMRO welcomes President Macron’s remarks on the issue of copyright reform today while addressing the European Parliament, and his announcement that he intends to prioritise creators’ rights. As the European Commission finalises its work on the EU Copyright Directive, IMRO is working to highlight the issue of ‘safe harbour’ protection and the need to address this loophole in order to create a level playing field between the platforms and rightsholders.
IMRO believes that a focus on copyright should represent a core element of a much-needed National Music Strategy. An environment that fosters growth for new and legitimate businesses, including platforms such as YouTube, SoundCloud and Facebook, while providing legal certainty for consumers, and ensuring that this is paired with adequate financial return for creators, is required.
Ireland’s music industry supports 13,000 jobs nationwide and is worth almost three quarters of a billion euro annually to the economy. Ensuring creators receive compensation for all uploads of their work is crucial to ensuring a sustainable basis for the music industry going forward.
About the ‘safe harbour’ loophole
‘Active on demand’ music services such as YouTube, SoundCloud and Facebook, are not currently obliged, under the E-Commerce Directive (Directive 2000/31/EC), to remunerate rightsholders for content stored and exploited on their sites. This leads to what is known as a Value Gap or Transfer of Value (ToV) in that, although the volume of musical content being consumed online is higher than ever, revenue generated from this consumption is not fairly distributed to creators.
Eleanor McEvoy, IMRO Chair (pictured left) joined a delegation of European music creators who travelled to Strasbourg today to call on the European Parliament for fair copyright rules in the digital world.
