Angad-Gaur: Regulate the internet through collective rights management

B9 10998. Erwin Angad-Gaur, Ntb: Copyright on the internet; why not make it easier? Regulate the internet through collective rights management. (De Nederlandse versie van dit artikel wordt gepubliceerd in het maartnummer van Sena Performers Magazine).

“(…) It is remarkable that the copyright laws on the internet differ from the rules and regulations that we apply to the good old fashioned (offline) world around us. These rules and regulations seem to work fine and appear to be perfectly maintainable. Few people know or seem to realize this.  (…)  Most use of music on the internet could easily be arranged, if we choose to apply the offline practise of collective rights management to the online environment: just by treating websites like YouTube, Spotify and 22tracks as a radio station or café. This would stimulate new business models to come, such as new demand streaming services. This would lead to more competition between suppliers, better services for consumers, as well as a more diverse market space online.

Finally, the issue of peer-to-peer use remains; individual consumers exchanging files on a non-commercial basis; an unstoppable phenomenon. This practice, however, is comparable to the old system of private copying. To check consumers’ private copy behaviour is as unpractical and undesirable as it is to check everybody’s activities on the internet in order to discover whether they are downloading or uploading copyright protected works. Therefore it would be logical to consider non-commercial up- and downloading as private use , which should be allowed by law (or by voluntary collective rights management), provided that fair compensation is paid. For example this compensation could be fulfilled by the internet subscription. 

Opposing these rather obvious solutions, which have proven their value offline for many years now, are mainly European Directives. The European Copyright Directive states that digital on demand services are the domain of the individual right holder and the E-commerce Directive safeguards internet service providers and platforms from copyright claims. However, European Directives can be changed. It is time to do so.”

Lees het volledige artikel hier.