[A2k] notes on alternative compensation

[Volker Grassmuck]

Dear all,

Jean-Baptiste Soufron has just been talking about flatrate models here
in Paris. It is therefore very timely to send around another rough draft
on this issue. It includes ideas from Peter Eckersley=92s proposal for a
position on alternative compensation systems though somewhat more from a
droit d'ateur perspective.

Volker



On ACS

Consumers are empowered by digital media technology. Understandably,
they like to do what it allows them to do, i.e. copy and share. Authors
and performers just as understandably want to be remunerated for their
creations. These interests are by no means mutually exclusive. Consumers
like to remunerate creatives as long as they know that it is acutally
the creatives they remunerate. Creatives like their fans to pass along
their works as long they know that at the end of the day their fans will
help them pay for their dinner. These complementary interests have been
the basis for the alliance of consumers and creative communities that
has emerged here in France, and for the same kind of alliance now
forming over the Paris Accord. The basis is the mutual understanding of
sharing the same goal. The mechanism to achieving this goal is an accord
in which creatives agree to collectively give permission to share their
works and consumers agree to collectively remunerate creatives.

1. Mass criminalization and pervasive control technology are not
acceptable responses to filesharing. They harm the interests of both
consumers and authors.

2. Just as photocopying machines and audio and video recorders
facilitated the reproduction not only of people=92s own and rights-free
material but also of copyright protected works, so do PC and Internet
today. The response in droit d=92auteur countries was to permit what
cannot be prevented and ensure a compensation to authors by means of a
levy. This private copying exception should be the guiding model for the
comparable challenge of the Internet age.

3. In fact, where ever repression of the widespread but currently
illegal practice of fileshare surpasses a certain societal pain
threshold, calls for a levied permission automatically arise. This was
the case after the recent wave of house searches in Germany, where the
ministry of justice incorrectly put aside a content flatrate as
incompatible with European and international law. To the contrary, the
Swedish minister of justice, after US pressure recently led to a
crackdown on a large Bittorrent site in his country, put a flatrate
solution on the political agenda. Here in France an alliance of a wide
spectrum from consumers and creative communities formed in order to
promote the Global License. Support in parlimant led to its passage.
Only by an unprecedented campaign -- Lib=E9ration called it =84total war on
the Global License" -- did the rights industry manage to get it rolled back=
.

4. In this light, we call for the legalisation of downloading and of the
making available of copyright protected works for private,
non-commercial purposes.

5. This legal permission is to be subjected to a levy collected by
Internet Service Providers and distributed to authors in proportion to
the measured number of downloads of their works.

6. Different from current levies on recording devices and recordable
media, Internet subscribers will be given the choice to pay the levy in
which case they may benefit from the permission, or not pay it if they
do not want to share copyright protected works.

7. The levy is administered by a collective rights management
organisation. In practice this might be a newly established online
collecting society, the existing collecting societies or a multilateral
clearing house that simply collects the levy and the usage data from
ISPs and allocates it to the collective organisations of which the
respective authors and performers are a member of.

8. Existing collecting societies need to improve their flexiblity with
regard to newly emerging alternative licensing and exploitation models,
to their transparency, to their internal democracy and their external
oversight.

9. The mechanisms for attaching metadata to the files and counting their
downloads (whether by sampling or universal measurement) are designed
and implemented with thorough and transparent peer review from the
computer security community, to ensure that they preserve users' privacy
and are resistant to manipulation by particular individuals or groups.

10. The rate  of the levy is negotiated among collective rights
management organisations, ISPs and consumers, and subject to regular review=
.

11. Works restricted by DRM or "technical protection measures" are
ineligible for funding from the collective remuneration scheme.