Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-05-14-Speech-3-292"
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"en.20030514.13.3-292"2
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"Mr President, Mrs Echerer, having kept us all informed on a subject which too often is relegated to the sidelines of our debates here, has shown herself to be a late night performer deserving of her intellectual property and of successive royalties.
I have to declare an interest: as a broadcaster and a film producer in my time, I am still in receipt of hard-won royalties of one kind or another from some of these activities. We are looking today in the world from which I emerged, at a situation where diversity of output is growing and where the power of those who control that output and buy the rights in it is also growing. Those who currently do not have a negotiated position for more than one payment for their own activities are the losers in all of that. For those in the audio-visual sector, this is a situation which has worsened, not improved.
As the questioner pointed out, music performers have a very strong union which over the years has been able to protect their position. For producers there is now some degree of recompense and this can be negotiated over time. No such rights apply in the case of audio-visual performers. We know precisely what they face because without the protection of treaty they are constantly confronting a larger power - one which has all the power and all the regiments of lawyers you could possibly want - which can smash them down.
It took the great artist Peggy Lee nearly 20 years to outface the Disney Corporation to receive continuing payments for the voiceovers that she had done for some Disney cartoon films. If it took her that long because she had no power of treaty to support her, what happens to the unknown and obscure artist who is placed in the position which the questioner has raised tonight?
I have one final question which perhaps will not be answered now, but which will recur in the Committee on Culture, Youth, Education, the Media and Sport. We know that on the eve of the WIPO informal meeting, we have one further chance to address this matter in September. What happens if those negotiations fail, as the last ones and the ones before that failed? What is the Commission going to do then? Are we going to persist with this issue, or are we going to lay it aside with a regretful sigh while the power of those who own the rights and jealously maintain them is extended, and while the audio-visual artists remain confined in the shadows?"@en1
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