In a letter addressed to the Presidency of the Council of the European Union, which Bulgaria officially took over January 1, 2018, an army of rightsholders lay out their demands.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe represent musical, audio-visual, literary, visual authors; performers; book, press, musical, scientific, technical and medical publishers; recorded music, film and TV producers; football leagues; broadcasters; distributors and photo agencies. These are at the very heart of Europe\u2019s creative sector,\u201d the groups write.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have formed an alliance to campaign for a solution to a major problem which is holding back our sector and jeopardizing future sustainability \u2013 the Transfer of Value, otherwise known as the Value Gap.<\/p>\n
\u201cUser uploaded content services have become vast distributors of our creative works e.g. film, music, photos, broadcasts, text and sport content \u2013 all while refusing to negotiate fair or any copyright licences with us as right holders.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/torrentfreak.com\/images\/value-gap-coalition.png\")
<\/a><\/center>Featuring groups representing many thousands of rightsholders, the coalition is the broadest yet to call for action against the \u2018Value Gap\u2019. Or, to put it another way, to demand a change in the law to prevent sites like YouTube, Facebook and other hosting platforms from \u201chiding\u201d behind provisions designed to protect them from the infringing activities of others.<\/p>\n\u201cThis problem is caused by a lack of clarity surrounding the application of copyright to certain online services and the abuse of European copyright \u2018safe harbor\u2019 rules in the e-Commerce Directive (2000\/31\/EC) by those services,\u201d the coalition writes.<\/p>\n
Referencing the EU Copyright Directive proposal tabled by the European Commission in September 2016, the coalition says that UUC services communicating content to the public should be compelled to obtain licenses for that content. If they play an \u201cactive role\u201d through promotion or optimization of content, UUC platforms should be denied \u2018safe harbors\u2019 under copyright law, they argue.<\/p>\n
Noting that there is \u201cno solution\u201d to the problem without the above fixes, the coalition cites last year\u2019s\u00a0ruling<\/a>\u00a0by the Court of Justice of the European Union which found that The Pirate Bay knowingly provide users with a platform to share copyright-infringing links.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is important to recall that the underlying policy objective of this legislation is to address the current unfairness in the online market due to the misapplication of copyright liability rules by UUC services. We would therefore like to stress that the focus should remain on finding effective solutions to tackle this issue.<\/p>\n \u201cAs an alliance, we look forward to working with your Presidency to achieve an effective solution to the Value Gap problem for the benefit of Europe,\u201d the coalition concludes.<\/p>\n The letter, addressed to Prime Minister Borissov, Minister Pavlova and Minister Banov, arrives in the wake of an alert sounded by several Members of the European Parliament.<\/p>\n Earlier this month they warned that the EU\u2019s proposed\u00a0mandatory upload filters<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 which could see UUC sites pre-screen user-uploaded content for infringement \u2013 amount to \u201ccensorship machines<\/a>\u201d that will do more harm than good.<\/p>\n The full letter can be found here\u00a0(pdf<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n Source: \u00a0![\"TorrentFreak\"](\"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/torrentfreak.png\")
<\/a> TorrentFreak.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"