In partnership with The Biz and Tech Lab
First of all, Rafael Cabrera, in charge of promotion at ICAA, started by strongly asserting that Spain was the Paradise on Earth of Internet Piracy, because there is state-of-the-art technological networks and a total absence of normative laws (Spain considered that illicit sharing of content over the Internet was not subject to the penal code, and since it is impossible to link IP addresses in civil pursuits, nothing is currently being done on a judiciary point of view…)
In 2008,more than 80 pages pointing towards illicit downloading of illegal material was being watched; we now account for more than 200. Rafael Cabrera then underlined that ICAA chose to concentrate their efforts on storage providers and dedicated servers rather than the users themselves (17 million of them in Spain; thus too many to keep under watch…), which is contrary to the position adopted by the French government. Finally, since the “illegal downloaders” are bound to become “future clients”, the idea is not to pass as a “bad guy”. Its in this perspective that FAPAE is also taking action choosing to propose a “mixed” model, administrative and legal.
Either through the creation of an Intellectual Property Commission (independent body reporting to the Ministry of Culture), which would be in charge of launching procedures to block web pages and shutting down dedicated servers, and the setting up of a judiciary control of decisions taken by this commission. If these two procedures to not help in curbing the problem, then users will also be concerned. Rafael Cabrera concluded by hoping to set up self regulation amongst professionals, in order to establish an economic model benefiting all actors of this new value chain (producers, distributors, ISPs, etc.); this is the third attempt… will it be successful this time?
Christian Soulié, the ALPA’s lawyer (Association de Lutte contre la Piraterie Audiovisuelle – Association against Audiovisual Piracy (see its very informative website…), ask the question of the author’s right: How do we solve the problem of VoD, and Piracy while respecting the author’s right? According to Me Soulié, the three consequences of piracy are impersonation, filtering access, and encryption: They are (and I quote) major dangers for the security of our countries… Me Soulié then explained that France decided to ask itself how to prevent illegal downloads, by responding through sanction , but also through education, fundamental principles of the three-strike-and-your-out policy.
Jacques Toubon, former minister and member of the Zelnik Commission (whose report was handed in last week, see story), presented the main propositions of this report starting from the original hypothesis (what means do the public powers and professional actors have to ensure that legal offers thrive?), while underlining that legal offers were yet to be interesting to consumers because of rights-holders reluctance to adhere to new profit sharing mechanisms… We then speak of three propositions: Availability of new releases, tv programs, and thus, of the renegotiation of Media Chronology; The widening of the film offer available on the Internet and IPTV services (he wished to underline that they had been “prospective” by asking the CSA and ARCEP to oppose the offer restriction coming from broadcasters and producers); and finally the support of digitalisation of content. He then insisted on the question of profit sharing underlining the dominating power of Google… He finished his intervention on this maybe famous quote to be… “The Global license is the legalization of piracy in exchange of the electricity bill…”
Finally, Aldo Olcese, president of the Spanish Coalition “creative and cultural industries and audiovisual” briefly presented three existing VOD offerings in Spain (where 3% of the downloads are legal):
Filmotech.com launched in 2007 by EGEDA – The Spanish Collective Management of Audiovisual rights – offers downloading and streaming, with 400 to 500 movies
Pixbox owned by Telefonica, compatible with Windows and mobile phones
Filmin launched by Spanish producers and distributors such as El Deseo or Alta Films, which offers downloads and streaming, in original version and subtitled, accessible on both Windows and Mac
Alas, we regret that this eternal VoD debate is always structured around the fight against piracy, repression, instead of supporting innovation and narrowing the gap between rights-holders and new technology companies.
