Licences for Europe - Trying to nip it in the bud?

To criticise the procedure already is to miss the point.  This is the Commission giving the industry a chance to resolve barriers to content before it legislates.  The plenary seemed to have successfully brought together a broad range of stakeholders so various industries seem to have bought into the process but it will still be a process that takes time.  The Commission is running evaluations of the 2001 Copyright Directive alongside this, so maybe legislative change will come anyway, especially if it doesn’t look like any improvement will be possible through licensing.   Maybe the concern of those who want copyright reform is that the process will be successful. A right to remuneration for screenwriters and directors for online exploitations, something that the SAA has been calling for action on for the last two years (see here and here), is probably not an issue for discussion in this forum (except to demonstrate that individual contractual arrangements do not protect creators enough) but we still think the process can be a constructive one for some specific issues and bring advantages for creators and consumers. Let’s see how the initiative looks in June before judging. JT