SABAM wants a collective agreement with internet providers over copyright fees

Sabam, the Belgian copyright management organization, finds the Belgian copyright law immensely outdated. It isn’t adapted to the use of the internet.

Sabam claims an annual loss of 13.8 million euro’s by the online exchange of music, money that actually belongs to artists. "The problem is that dissemination over the Internet is hardly regulated, and that the traditional market, which mainly consists of CDs and DVDs, has collapsed in recent years. Large sums of money that are due for artists now flow into the bank accounts of the providers."

"There is a serious imbalance created between the giant revenues of providers and the ever decreasing revenue in the classic movie and music market," said the director of Sabam. Sabam therefore calls for a law that requires internet access providers to come to an agreement with the collective management societies. "We call for a collective agreement with a provider," said Sabam. "This has been the case with cable operators for years. It’s actually the same principle. The cable media also inject creative content in a network. Why would there be a difference between cable companies and providers?

However, there is a significant difference with the cable companies: they decide what signals they transmit. Internet access providers do not. Belgian politician Tommelein states that internet access providers are not responsible for the information they spread on their network under current EU regulations.

The director of Sabam however, feels that for that very reason new legislation is needed. "The distribution of protected content has taken off so dramatically that we hardly even speak of a passive attitude. "The number of internet providers have in recent years risen to huge volumes. This is in part because they can offer attractive creative content, such as film, music or games.” 

Tommelein is concerned that providers will simply pass these costs on to their users, which would be unfair to internet users who don’t download. A parallel with the Dutch Thuiskopie system for data carriers can be made. A small levy is added on each data carrier for a home copy of copyrighted material. A system whereby this levy for private copies of copyright material is party charged on data carriers and partly on data traffic could be worth examining.

SABAM hopes that the Belgian presidency of the EU can set the topic on the European agenda.

12 May 2010