Berlin declaration on music flatrate

[elektro80]

During the Wizards of OS conference in Berlin, from 10 to 12 June 2004,
legal scientists and civil rights defenders jointly launched a declaration
on collectively managed online rights. The declaration is a response to
the call for comments on the Communication from the European Commission on
the management of copyright and related rights in the internal market -
COM(2004) 261. See also EDRI-gram 2.8, 21 April 2004.

The declaration states that DRM and mass-prosecution of file-sharers are
not acceptable to an open and equitable society and calls on the
Commission to consider a music flatrate to ensure compensation without
control.

"File-sharing teaches us a lesson that markets and lawmakers should listen
to. It says that shipping bits from A to B has become such a low value
service that Internet users effortlessly can provide it themselves. This
is a result of the communications revolution that the EU has been
supporting actively for the last decade. These developments could be good
news to the content industries, but not if they are continue to base their
business models on a proposition of exclusive service provisions that they
no longer hold."

In stead the Berlin declaration recommends the development of an
alternative compensation system (ACS), or, as it has also been called in
application to the music market, a music flatrate. "Rather than relying on
'pay-per-use' fees collected directly by commercial producers from end
users based on pervasive use of DRM technologies, we recommend extending
to the Internet the practice of indirect compensation through collecting
societies."

Berlin Declaration on Collectively Managed Online Rights: Compensation
without Control (12.06.2004)
http://wizards-of-os.org/forums.html?id=1431

European Commission: more rules for collecting societies (21.04.2004)
http://www.edri.org/cgi-bin/index?id=000100000148