The following statement was sent to a.o. the European Parliament's Cultural and Legal Committees
The European Council of Artists representing professional artists associations in 25 European countries strongly supports the Lévai Report adopted by the EP Legal Affairs Committee on 20 February 2007 by an overwhelming majority.
In the light of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, which will come into force on 18th March 2007, the ECA urges all MEPs to take into account that the commission recommendation on cross-border management of online music would cause severe damage to cultural diversity, as expressed in the Lévai Report: “A ‘big-bang’ style introduction of competition in the field of collective management of authors’ rights should not be pursued because of the risk of irreversible damage to cultural diversity in Europe.”
If the market for collective rights management were opened without any kind of control, the market power would be concentrated in the hands of a few major rights holders, the reciprocal network of collecting societies which has been serving all rights holders equally for more than 100 years would cease to exist. The European Union is a signatory party to the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. The ECA expects all MEPs to decide according to its provisions as well as to the underlying concept of the dual character of cultural activities, goods and services having “both an economic and a cultural nature, because they convey identities, values and meanings, and must therefore not be treated as solely having commercial value” (Convention preamble).
The ECA is well aware that there is an ICMP/CIEM petition “Writers and composers for choice” circulating with a number of artists mentioned, some of whom have assured us that they had never been asked to sign in. While ECA together with the other artists associations concerned will take the necessary steps to clear this matter up, we reject the misleading and at times ridiculous contents of this petition claiming rightly that there “will be pressure to vary the Recommendation from those who do not share our desire to encourage and support our culture”. Whoever speaks of our culture, has not even understood that culture, like snow, does not go together with possessive pronouns. There might be his new book, her painting and their expression of indigenous culture, it is reasonable to speak of our cultural identity, but there is no such thing as my culture, your culture and so forth.
The ECA underlines that this petition aimed at destroying the existing diversified system of collecting societies does not express the opinions of any of the legitimate artists associations working on European and global levels.
11th March 2007
Ludwig Laher
ECA President