Creative Content

Creative Content in a European Digital SIngle Market - Challenges for the Future.

DATE: JANUARY 2010

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

We very much welcome the Commission’s Reflection Paper on Creative Content in a European Digital Single Market: Challenges for the Future published by DG InfoSoc and DG Market; in particular the importance it places upon Europe's culturally diverse  and economically vibrant creative content sector. We further applaud the Commission’s approach to call for fresh thinking and are happy to share our experiences and to offer our insights into what is working well in the UK. To help provide some further background on this important issue we enclose a copy of UK Music’s response to the consultation “i2010: priorities for new strategy for European information society (2010-2015).”

We would like to emphasise how much we share the Commission’s ambition to create for Europe an online market that enables creativity to flourish for the benefit of all – creators, consumers, right holders and other businesses. Our vision for the future is for a stable digital marketplace where the disruption, divisions and barriers of the past decade are replaced with mutually beneficial partnerships, flexibility, choice and an explosion of new cultural goods and services. For this to happen, we also need fair and transparent rules, an acceptance by all participants of their responsibilities to play by the rules, and the means by which rules can be enforced.

For Europe and indeed the world, the digital age has brought with it opportunity and challenge in equal measure. But it has yet to balance the tantalising appeal of endless limitation with a realistic sense of everyday pragmatism. As in every other sphere of such social and economic importance, the online world must have rules and regulations. This is crucial both for protecting the public and for the creation of a properly functioning marketplace. The internet – engaging children and adults in their millions and connecting people from all over the world – is unquestionably a powerful and enticing place with more goods and services (legal and illegal) and more information and mis-information on offer, than any other marketplace in history. That it now commands such a dominance and influence in so many lives yet currently is the least regulated sphere of public life is almost inconceivable.

We do welcome the Reflection Paper’s recognition that the current scale of illegal downloading can jeopardise the development of an economically viable market. We would draw your attention to the recent solutions put forward by the Governments of France and the United Kingdom and would recommend to the Commission that they consider a harmonised approach to digital infringement throughout all member states.

We would also ask the Commission (and national competition authorities) to reconsider its approach to the “public interest test” when applying competition law. We believe that the current approach is restrictive and ultimately damaging to the interests of commercial users and consumers. In the current climate it is more vital than ever that open and transparent discussions can take place (excluding discussions on price), not only between right holders but also between right holders, platform owners and service providers. We would suggest that a more flexible and consistent interpretation of competition law, one which respects the benefits that procompetitive collaboration can bring, would make the task of creating a functioning European digital market significantly easier.

The UK is justifiably renowned as a world leader in culture and media. Latest estimates suggest that in 2007 revenues from the UK creative industries amounted to some £67.5 billion. The UK’s creative sector now contributes over 6.4% of our nation’s Gross Value Added and sustains an estimated 1.8 million jobs while delivering a greater proportion of the UK’s GDP than any other nation. At the time of its publicationthe Work Foundation’s: Staying ahead: the economic performance of the UK’s creative industries placed the UK’s creative industries on a similar economic footing as the financial services sector.

Click on the link below to read the full document.

UK Music response to Creative Content in a European Digital Single Market January 2010.pdf