Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-09-24-Speech-3-445"
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"en.20080924.36.3-445"2
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".
Mr Toubon has given a magnificent exposé on the problem in legal terms. This saves me from having to tackle this aspect.
If Beethoven were alive today and creating symphonies and if he were obliged to enter the international market in order to compete with the major music multinationals, he would die of hunger. His financial situation would be much worse than it was in the 18th and 19th centuries. I believe that this is a vital point that must be conveyed.
Mr Toubon referred to our committee’s decision to set up a working group on the protection of intellectual property. We hope that the Commission, and in particular Mr McCreevy, who has always been a great friend of this Committee on Legal Affairs, will be ready to cooperate with us, to convey their concerns, but also to listen. This working group will also listen to the viewpoints of the thousands of people who, at this moment in time, are humbly engaged in great intellectual work and who are allowing these audiovisual media that we are creating to be filled with content.
If not, there is a real danger, as I have said, that we will create a great audiovisual system that is absolutely empty, that can only be occupied by advertisements and that has no specific content.
As a result, Madam President, I believe that the proposal, the oral question and the motion for a resolution that we plan to table are aimed at reinforcing this independence and this unique identity of European culture, which cannot be replaced by any abstraction based on free competition.
I should therefore like to look at this issue on a much more practical level. On the matter of copyright, the Directorate-General for Competition starts from the basis that authors have the same weight as the large multinational companies that manage the world of media. This is not true.
Authors and performers are in fact workers. There may indeed be some stars – such as those who appear in magazines – who have some choice. However, the vast majority of authors, performers and creators do not have this choice. Their position is virtually the same as that of workers organised through their copyright societies.
To claim that these thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of authors, who work in Europe on a daily basis and who obtain their income through their societies of authors, operate as if they were multinational companies is a fiction that has nothing to do with reality.
If we fail to start from the basis that the current European societies of authors each represent the specific interests of thousands of members and that they act as such, we will never grasp the reality.
I believe that the Commission is probably just doing its job, but when it talks about studies, I start to feel rather concerned, because who is carrying out these studies, who is paying for these studies and what pressure groups are having an influence on them?
That is why, in the European Union, we have a democratic system between the Member States and within the Member States. It is the responsibility of the Members of the European Parliament to humbly assume the role of expressing, in this House, the social reality which is perhaps not found in offices or in major economic studies.
We find ourselves in a situation whereby, if we are not careful, if we try to deregulate this sector as has been done in others, we will end up killing creation, which is one of our unique assets. Despite all its problems, Europe is characterised by great creation. We will end up with an audiovisual industry that is absolutely devoid of content; you can already see this in other countries. I therefore believe that, at this moment in time, some of our efforts must be devoted to providing these creators with an institutional system that allows them to take action.
I believe that acting in the abstract, thinking that the little musician, the little composer can defend himself is absurd."@en1
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