Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Europe: EC has welcomed progress made towards pan-European music licensing following discussions in the Online Commerce Roundtable

[ec] European Commissioner for Competition Neelie Kroes has welcomed progress made towards pan-European music licensing following discussions in the Online Commerce Roundtable. In particular, she welcomes confirmation by French collecting society SACEM that it is willing, in principle, to entrust other collecting societies with pan-European licensing of its repertoire and to act as non-exclusive rights manager for publishers and other collecting societies. She also welcomes confirmation by multinational record company EMI that it is ready to entrust rights managers to offer its repertoire for the whole European Economic Area (EEA) and notes Apple's statements that if iTunes was readily able to license rights on a multi-territorial basis from publishers and collecting societies, it would consider making its content available to all European consumers, including those in EU countries where iTunes is currently not available. Commissioner Neelie Kroes set up the Roundtable in September 2008 in order to examine ways to reduce barriers to online commerce so that consumers can take better advantage of the opportunities offered by the Internet. The report on the Roundtable, just published on the Europa website, outlines the conclusions of the meeting that Commissioner Kroes hosted on 17 September 2008, as well as of a 16 December 2008 follow-up meeting which focused on the distribution of online music.

Commissioner Kroes welcomes progress on pan-European music licensing following Online Commerce Roundtable
see also Online Commerce Roundtable

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