Secretary General's January Digest, 2025

Although the days are slowly getting longer, I must admit that the way the world is going, I am feeling rather gloomy about what this year will bring. At the same time, I remain positive about what my dedicated team and our committed member organisations can achieve together!

Having said that, I was quick to get back to work after the holidays.

First, I worked on the SAA's contribution to the 2nd draft of the AI Code of Practice.

We convened the SAA Working Group on AI & Copyright to discuss our comments on the second draft of the General-Purpose AI Code of Practice. Together with my colleague Luisiana, we then drafted and submitted our contribution on 16 January. On 17 January, the EU Commission's working group met, where I was invited to speak and present some of our key points. 

On my LinkedIn, I published the brief comments I made at the meeting:

  • I welcomed the inclusion of a reference to the three-step-test in the preamble of the copyright section of the Code of Practice. As the Code focuses very much on the text and data mining (TDM) exception in relation to AI, this is a good reminder that exceptions must be interpreted restrictively!
  • With that said, we deplored again that the Commission still neglects the first part of the obligation of AI providers to put in place a “policy to comply with Union law on copyright and related rights”. We want the signatories to the Code to fulfil their obligation by approaching collective management organisations (CMOs) and developing licensing strategies. We recalled that authors’ CMOs are a one-stop-shop for granting authorisations after negotiation and agreement with the AI companies. I therefore regretted that CMOs were no longer mentioned in the draft Code. 
  • Finally, I welcomed the use of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to monitor the corporate compliance but regretted that many of them do not apply to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

In addition, on Friday 31 January I submitted our comments on the template for public summary of training data that was presented by the Commission at the WG meeting on 17 January. The summary will be an essential tool for rightholders to understand if AI model providers used their works. The battle here is the level of granularity of the information provided. We recommended that AI developers disclose information about all the datasets they use and about all the internet domain names from which they scrapped content, with a list of URLs by type of content (text, image, video, audio). On the other side, AI developers have been reluctant to disclose exhaustive information, claiming that it would violate trade secrets. 

The battle is not over as a 3rd draft of the Code of Practice will be presented in February. We will then have to decide whether the final Code meets our expectations.

Next, we relaunched our requests for meeting with Members of the European Parliament

With my colleague Annica, we are back to meeting MEPs and their assistants to discuss the concerns of audiovisual authors and how the European Parliament can make a difference for authors' rights in the coming year. We are meeting not only MEPs working on culture but also those from other committees. While the Union has a supporting competence on culture, many policies have a direct impact on European authors, such as in the field of copyright, digital policy, industry, internal market and employment (Have a look at our presentation brochure for new MEPs.).

Finally, I have been preparing for our first board meeting of the year during the Berlinale

In February, I will be travelling to Berlin with Annica for the first meeting of the SAA Board of the year on 14 February. We will discuss a new Strategic Plan that will set the direction of the organisation for the next three years. As this is SAA's 15th Anniversary year 🎉 we will also prepare exciting activities and events for members, authors and guests (I won't tell you yet 😉).

While in Berlin, I will also attend some Berlinale industry events, in particular the European Parliament event on AI in the audiovisual sector: Innovation, Ethics, Democratic Values on 14 February.

Talking about films, I had the opportunity to watch ‘Animal’, the LUX Audience Award finalist in January in Brussels, in the presence of its Greek screenwriter and director Sofia Exarchou. it was an insightful film with excellent cinematography and acting.

🌞 Stay well and have a fruitful February! 

Cécile

My 3 reading tips