ECA has sent the following comment to the European Writers' Council and the European Visual Artists on 31 May 2010:
The European Council of Artists (ECA) support the statement by the European Writers' Council and the European Visual Artists on the amendments to Ms. Gallo's draft report on "Enhancing the enforcement of intellectual property rights in the internal market", which are on the agenda of the European Parliament's Committee on Legal Affairs on 1 June.
Being a European "umbrella" for interdisciplinary artists' councils and artists' organisations of 25 European countries, ECA underlines the need to be careful about the terminology that is being used.
An important lesson of the proposed education on Intellectual Property Rights would be to distinguish between the system of Authors' and Performers' rights, used in most European countries and the Anglo American copyright system. When translated into English both are often named "copyright", although the positions of the individual right holders are very different.
Yours sincerely
Michael Burke,
president