Help! Yesterday’s solution is still needed today, warn artists

A big question-mark still hangs over the issue of how to secure artists’ income in a digital environment.

Their creations are all too easy to copy and distribute, despite the existence of digital rights management (DRM) technology (see right), a form of copyright protection baked into music or film files that has proven largely ineffective against the armies of private copiers sitting at anonymous desktops all over the world.

The current system for compensating artists for private copying by individuals dates back to the 1960s. Levies imposed on electronic equipment (reel-to-reel audiotape recorders in The Beatles’ heyday, anything from iPods to computer hard-drives nowadays) are redistributed as royalties for artists by collecting societies, the middle-men of the entertainment industry.

Internal Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy appeared to have made up his mind last year that levies were yesterday’s solution.

The system, applied unevenly across the EU, he said, impeded the smooth functioning of the internal market.

Levies on a 30-gigabyte iPod player, for example, vary enormously, from €2.56 in Germany to €90 in Spain.

In 2005, €560 million in levies was collected across the EU.

Artists’ emotive protests against an end to levies seemed doomed to failure. The death knell on levies had, in any case, been sounded in a 2001 EU law on copyright, which said that compensation for artists should take increasing use of DRM into account. The results of a 2006 Commission impact assessment on the fairness of levies appeared to favour the electronics goods industry, which had long been campaigning for stricter application of the law.

"Our soul is being taken away to the benefit of multinationals," said singer Paloma San Brasilio in the European Parliament last year. San Brasilio was a member of La cultura es lo primero, a counter-campaign translated as Culture First, which had been set up by Spanish collecting society SGAE. The coalition expanded across the EU to include the likes of the award-winning Belgian filmmakers the Dardenne brothers.

A surprise 11th-hour intervention by the then French prime minister Dominique de Villepin saved the day for artists. Two weeks before McCreevy’s expected announcement of an end to the levies regime, Villepin sent a letter to Commission President José Manuel Barroso, pleading for the publication of the text to be delayed, so as to allow further discussion among member states. Levies were, he said, a significant source of income for artists. Barroso stepped in and the recommendation was shelved.

Villepin’s show-stopping appearance in the saga was driven, said critics, by motivations less noble than empathy with struggling artists. As a net recipient of a certain proportion of levies collected in France, the government was reluctant to see the system overturned, they said. Whether the issue comes back this year remains to be seen. So far, no signs of a repeat performance can be detected.

A big question-mark still hangs over the issue of how to secure artists’ income in a digital environment.