European legislation (such as the “Information Society” Directive 2001/29/EC) was drafted with the intention of protecting performers and allowing them to receive a fair share of the revenue derived from the online exploitation of their creative contribution. To this end, a specific type of right was introduced: the “making available” right, which gives performers the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit the making available of their recorded performances to the public on demand. Pursuant to this legislation, commercial entities may not provide services such as video on demand, interactive streaming or music/film downloads without being first authorised to do so by all the performers involved. Regrettably, in practice this legislation is largely ineffective.

As performers’ exclusive intellectual property rights are not adequately protected by the current EU legislative framework, it is easy for businesses to exclude in practice performers from any financial reward when their sound and audio-visual performances are commercially exploited online. In many EU countries, statutory presumptions of transfer, often combined with less powerful unions and ineffective social dialogue, mean that performers often have to sign away all their rights from the start, for any future use of their performances, anywhere and in perpetuity in return for inadequate compensation if any at all. This situation is both unfair and unacceptable. Weiterlesen →