IFPI Press Release, October 22, 1998
Global Record Industry Heads Call on UK to Lead Fight for Music Rights
and to Stop Piracy in the Internet Age
London - October 22, 1998
Heads of the international recording industry today called on Britain to champion its future in the digital era by pushing for strong new international copyright laws and for tougher policing by governments against global piracy.
They asked for a crucial European Copyright Directive, aimed at allowing record companies to trade music on-line and with new digital formats, to be strengthened as it passes through the European Parliament in Strasbourg in December. And they appealed to Britain to lead the campaign for strict new legal controls on the CD manufacturing industry worldwide.
The delegation of record company heads paid tribute to UK policies promoting the music industry and raised its future concerns with government during the meeting in London of the board members of IFPI, the record industry's international trade organization. IFPI represents more than 1300 record producers and distributors in the $38 billion global record industry, including the industry's six large record companies - BMG, EMI, PolyGram, Sony Music, Universal and Warner Music.
The record industry delegation met in London with Trade and Industry Minister Kim Howells (responsible for copyright) and the Minister responsible for music at the Department of Culture, Janet Anderson. They urged Britain, whose record industry earns the UK $2 billion in export revenue, to take on a bigger international role in promoting the music industry worldwide at a time of critical opportunities and threats posed by new digital technologies.
IFPI Director-General Nic Garnett said: "The British music industry is a tremendous economic success story, and the British government is an enlightened supporter of its domestic industry. We now look for Britain to take on a more international role, to shape laws to unlock the huge economic potential for music in the age of the Internet, and to fight the growing threat of digital piracy. We also want Britain to lead the fight against pirate CD manufacturing, which costs the music industry $5 billion a year.
New copyright legislation now being considered by the European Parliament will have a huge impact on the livelihoods of British artists, composers and record companies. And CD piracy, from Shanghai to Sao Paulo, from Moscow to Macau, erodes British exports and costs British jobs. This is a time for Britain to fight internationally to sustain the great success it has achieved for its music industry at home."
What next in the fight against CD Piracy? Plant licensing controls.
Specifically, IFPI is calling for the EU to exert greater political and trade pressure on countries with high levels of pirate CD manufacturing. One year ago, faced with a dramatic rise of CD piracy, IFPI launched a new "zero tolerance" strategy, recruiting a team of international police specialists and investigators to target the problem at source in the manufacturing plant. The strategy has had notable successes in Hong Kong and parts of eastern Europe, where tens of millions of pirate CDs have been taken off the market.
New plant licensing laws, introduced in early 1998, led to this success. Those laws need extending worldwide, and particularly to a number of Asian, east European and Latin American countries where rapidly-increasing CD production, much of it suspected as illegal, remains unregulated. The new controls consist of: registration of all plants; compulsory use of the Source Identification (SE) Code at all plants; and regulation of the import of plant and raw materials.
Introducing the new controls should be a top priority in the forthcoming EU policy review of anti-piracy enforcement in Europe's internal market. The Commission will be producing a Green Paper on piracy and enforcement by the end of the year. Laws for the music industry to embrace on-line distribution and new formats are outlined in The WIPO Treaties and the EU Copyright Directive.
The recording industry pioneered the first digital format, the CD, in the 1980s. The industry now wants to take up the huge potential benefits of the information society, and to distribute music by new electronic transmission new digital formats. Electronic distribution of music is in its infancy but likely to develop very quickly. In the last 18 months all the leading record companies have established web-sites for promotional and commercial distribution of records. Some are already experimenting with direct digital distribution, such as a trial agreement in Germany for on-line distribution between record companies and Deutsche Telekom.
However, a legitimate on-line marketplace for the sale of music cannot exist without adequate copyright laws built into it. The UK should push for Europe urgently to enact such laws.
The EU Copyright Directive will implement two 1996 international copyright protection (WIPO) Treaties that were earlier this month passed into US law. The recording industry is pressing for the following changes when the Directive goes to the European Parliament in a crucial vote scheduled for December.
The music industry needs exclusive rights to control the use of its content over new transmission services (such as multi-channel broadcasting) that will be an important distribution outlet for its music in the future Digital "private" copying, the equivalent of a retail sale - cannot be exempted from copyright protection.
Loopholes allowing so-called "temporary copying" are an invitation to interact pirates and need closing. Record companies need proper legal rights to use technologies such as watermarking and encryption. They need protection from hacking equipment that could circumvent those technologies.
For further information contact:
Adrian Strain, Director of Communications
IFPI Tel: (44) 171 878 7900/39 Fax: (44) 171 878 7950
General e-mail: info@ifpi.org