Brussels Plans Copyright Rules For Digital Age

The European Commission is finalising a draft directive to ensure that the copyright owners of intellectual properties, such as music and films, receive full legal protection when distributed in digital form.

The draft directive is to be published in late July before the summer break or in early autumn. It follows the publication in March last year of a Green Paper on legal protection for encrypted services, including pay-television and interactive tele-shopping.

Europes entertainment companies have mounted a strong lobby at national and international level to secure legal protection when their copyrights are distributed over the Internet, or on other digital networks such as high-speed cable television systems.

Music is already one of the most popular subjects on the Internet. Yet record companies, artists and composers will require full copyright protection, and the ability to control access to their material, if they are to exploit the commercial potential of selling recordings directly to consumers by downloading them on to personal computers.

Similarly, film producers and software developers require similar measures to ensure that they are paid for their copyrights, and can protect them from the threat of piracy.

The commission will address four specific areas of digital copyright in the draft directive:

Ensuring that all member states extend copyright protection to cover digitally-distributed material.

Introducing a distribution right to enable the copyright owner to control where their work is distributed.

Allowing copyright owners to develop technical means of controlling access to their material and detecting unauthorised usage of it, for instance by encrypting and tattooing digital signals.

Harmonising European Union legislation on private copying, such as recording on to blank video or audio cassette tapes for personal use.

These measures broadly reflect an agreement clinched at a diplomatic conference of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (Wipo) in Geneva last December.

This agreement decreed that the 30 countries belonging to Wipo should amend their national law to extend copyright protection to encompass new forms of digital distribution. Once the European Commissions draft directive has been adopted as European law, all member states will be required to adapt their national legislation accordingly. One of the trickiest areas to harmonise may be private copying, because it is an issue where national legislation differs widely. Most European countries, other than the UK, Luxembourg and Ireland, impose levies on sales of blank audio and video cassettes which are then redistributed to the copyright owners. Sweden and Portugal are now in the process of introducing such levies. However, it is not clear whether these levies will become superfluous if effective measures are developed to encrypt and identify digital signals thereby preventing unauthorised reproduction. Copyright Financial Times Limited 1997. All Rights Reserved.