MEPs call for new controls on copyright

Date: 02/10/1997

THE new environment for copyright law which technological advances such as the Internet have created demand a single, coherent Union response rather than a piecemeal reaction, according to MEPs.

The European Parliament's legal affairs committee has recommended that the three central copyright issues at stake - the right of reproduction, the right of communication to the public and the right of distribution - should be tackled by one EU directive.

While MEPs acknowledge that existing national legislation provides an effective legal framework for copyright and related rights, they argue that it does not answer the challenges created by the development of the information society.

Their view that the advances made by new technologies are outpacing national and international legislation is shared by the European Commission. In a follow-up last November to a Green Paper on Copyright and Related Rights in the Information Society, the Commission noted that even the 1995 Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) had not examined some of the problems now arising.

With the advent of digital technology, new opportunities have arisen for almost anyone to retrieve the protected work, alter it, either by reworking, re-colouring or re-zooming, and make it available in its revised form.

Moral rights are currently determined by member state, not EU legislation. But the author of the Parliament's report, Italian Socialist MEP Roberto Barzanti, and his colleagues maintain that a single Union framework is now needed to prevent diverging national measures from disrupting the internal market.

The legal affairs committee has also stipulated that those drafting the new EU rules should take into account their impact on freedom of speech, respect public and private interests, and avoid imposing disproportionate burdens on those involved.