by eXgae and Net’s contributions

When it comes to drawing up legislative policies, States should keep in mind that royalties first emerged as an incentive to creation and as such they are a medium, not, as the entertainment industry would like them to be, the goal

Amigos del Desarrollo at the WIPO

1. That any restrictions placed on filesharing (P2P) networks or other protocols be considered to be an act of obscurantism and an attack on the fundamental democratic rights guaranteed by our constitution and by innumerous international treaties. Our rights to knowledge, to learning, to access to culture and to freedom of experssion would be seriously undermined if the tools currently available to society were to be restricted.

2. That authors shall be able to manage royalties arising from their own work. Considering that royalty management bodies are private entities and, just like consultancy or cleaning services, they should be able to be used or not, according to the way we decide to live our lives, we ask that royalty management associations become what they really are:

• Private entities that ONLY AND EXCLUSIVELY manage the «accounts» of their members, that is, the exploitation rights of a certain percentage of artists. That free competition be permitted as with all private entities, and that under no circumstances should royalty management bodies be allowed to delve into the privacy and the pockets of citizens and even less to use public assets and land for their own private benefit. That authors and editors should not be represented by the same entity, as in the days of vertical unions, that all members have the right to vote. And, above all, that royalty management entities should only manage registered works, thus allowing the use of free licences. That in no case should private entities manage non-individualisable moneys, (such as the digital levy in Spain, if it continued to exist), given that it violates its own statues.

3. That author/creators be paid equitably (15% of the budget for the activity they are involved in), whether or not they are members of a royalty management body. That, if they so wish, artists be paid mainly for their creations and not for the exploitation they generate. This will prevent the use of royalties for the precarization of the waged labour in the creative sector, that is, prevent the non-payment of fair wages in exchange for hypothetical earnings through royalties.

4. The immediate abolition of all «digital levys» that indiscriminately sanction everybody in the name of «compensation for artists» and attempt to penalize activities that are in no way criminal. Abolition of the concept of compensation for private copies, with full acceptance of the right to private copy as an intrinsic part of human memory since the invention of the Internet.

5. That artworks become part of the Public Domain within periods that are of benefit to creativity and society. To allow more than one generation to live from somebody’s work is a way of encouraging parasitism and creative stagnancy, and of deactivating reinvestment, In particular, considering that a measure designed to favour individuals ends up actually benefiting multinationals that distort original creations. We ask that works become part of the public domain within a reasonable period of time, according to the kind of work, with a maximum of 30 years. That all creative work that uses material obtained from the public domain is to have a «sharealike type» copyleft licence that makes it impossible to privatise the use of its results, which will revert to the commons. Likewise, all works created with public moneys, in as much as the commons is considered to be their «producer», will be obliged to use this same type of licence. Obviously, the economic exploitation of the works in both of these cases would still be permitted.

6. That there be no requirement to seek an author’s permission for the reproduction, transformation or diffusion of artistic, scientific or technical works that have already been presented publicly, when the purpose is educational, teaching or scientific research in the public sphere, as long as the author’s name is included and all moral rights respected. That this use be subject to «share-alike» formulas in order to avoid undue appropriation. The defence of the right to private copy and fair use of works should be firm and absolute, given that copying is the very base of learning and culture. Author/creators are indebted to shared culture and for this reason their contributions to Culture do not have to be subject to any form of compensation beyond their own commercial use of their work (sales, fees and royalties related to said sales or performances…).

7. Likewise, when the copyright for any kind of work is held by government institutions, such work should immediately become part of the public domain for any purpose whatsoever.

8. That the «right to quote» be defended in all cases as a vehicle for the democratic development of the information society, in all cases in which the material quoted has already been made public in advance, whether it is quoted for educational or scientific reasons, or for purely informational or creative purposes.

9. That the concept of «missed losses» should be eliminated from anything relating to cultural production, as should the mandatory nature of payment for public communication and payment for private copy.

10. Considering that the secrecy of communication is guaranteed by State Constitutions and International Human Rights Treaties, that the data traffic received or generated on the Internet should not be able to be manipulated, hindered, distorted, deflected, prioritised or delayed in accordance with the kind of content, protocol or application used, the source or destination of the communication or any other circumstances unrelated to its purpose («Net Neutrality») that is not based on public interest issues and without a court order. In all cases, any other limitation or restriction entails a curtailment of the right to freedom of expression (the right to send and receive information without any limitations other than those established by law). This is one of the foundations of democratic societies, recognised by all international bodies. We ask that this traffic be seen as the private communication that it is, and us such, that a court order be required if it is to be monitored, traced, archived or have its content studied in any way. It is up to judges, in accordance with the applicable legislation and by due process of law, to determine the cases in which there has been an offense and to establish the appropriate penalty in accordance with the Principle of Proportionality. These provisions are already in place in the Criminal Code.