INTERNET : AUTHORS' SOCIETIES URGE ACTION AGAINST PIRACY.

Feeling pressured by the fall in revenue from the music industry and the development of the internet, European authors' societies asked the EU to deal with online piracy, during a large conference, on 24 and 25 November in Brussels. At the same time, they are calling for the recognition of their remunerative, economic and cultural activities.

"Artists and authors are today confronted with a decrease in their revenues and the economic value of their work. The development of the internet forcibly imposes some adaptation," said Bernard Miyet, president of the Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers (SACEM) in France and the president of the European Grouping of Societies of Authors and Composers (GESAC), which gathers 35 members (EU, Norway and Switzerland). For him "the feeling which dominates today among rights holders is that the response given by the public authorities is based on improvisation and dogmatism".

The debate on the management of authors' rights is ongoing in many ways in the EU. Recently, in the name of competition, the European Commission made 24 societies of authors abandon certain contractual clauses practiced between themselves for the diffusion of music by internet, cable and satellite. The International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC) complained to the EU's Court of First Instance in the hope of obtaining an annulment of this decision, thought to be contrary to the interest of artists and the cultural sector. According to the GESAC, the...