[wos] (Fwd) [edri-ip] Nice Berlin Declaration coverage

[Volker Grassmuck]

------- Forwarded message follows -------
From:           	"Ian Brown" <ian at fipr.org>

This is a relatively influential (subscription-only) Washington DC
newspaper I believe...

Warren's Washington Internet Daily
Vol. 5 No. 119, 22 June 2004
...
Copyright

A group of over 40 copyright scholars and activists Mon. urged the
European Commission (EC) to consider a flat-rate compensation scheme for
ensuring "compensation of rightsholders without control over users." The
Berlin Declaration on Collectively Managed Online Rights responded to
the EC's call for comments on its communication to the Council, the
European Parliament, and the European Economic & Social Committee on the
management of copyright and related rights in the Internet Market. It
grew out of a series of meetings last week on alternative compensation
systems, said U.K. Foundation for Information Policy Research Dir. Ian
Brown. Key points include: (1) Digital rights management and mass
prosecution of file swappers aren't acceptable solutions to an open and
equitable society. (2) The primary goal of copyright lawmaking must be
to balance the creators' rights with those of society. (3) Collecting
societies must be more democratic, transparent and flexible, allowing
members to release their works under open-access, noncommercial
licenses. (4) Once collecting societies have become suitably reformed,
Europe's successful experience with copyright exceptions and limitations
compensated by levies should be reviewed for possible application to the
online world. (5) The EC should consider a content flatrate system under
which rightsholders would license their Internet rights to a collecting
society as they now do for many offline uses. The online collecting
societies would oversee the measurement of transfers of protected works
online and compensate copyright owners based on actual use of their
files by end users. The funds could be raised via
several sources, including voluntary subscription payments, levies on
relevant associated goods and services (such as broadband connections),
MP3 players, and others, in addition to the existing levies on blank
media and photocopiers and others. The group agreed with the Commission
that Community-wide licensing would be best, and urged it to harmonize
the various national exceptions to copyright infringement. U.S.
signatories included William Fisher, dir., Berkman Center for Internet &
Society, Harvard; Robin Gross, dir., IP Justice; and James Love, dir.,
Consumer Project on Technology. --Dugie Standeford


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   home:   http://waste.informatik.hu-berlin.de/Grassmuck