Commission curbs Civil Society in DRM Hearing

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Civil Society representatives, user and consumer advocates were not
allowed to voice their concerns on social, cultural and economic
consequences of a wide-spread introduction of so-called Digital Rights
Management (DRM) technology during a hearing organized by the European
Commission on 11 October, in Brussels. Stopping short from actually
censoring these concerns, which were voiced by a large number of advocacy
groups and individuals during a recent consultation on DRM, the
Commission's DG Internal Market, who organized the event, invited only a
few representatives of organizations that had taken a critical stance
towards DRM.

Instead, lobbyists representing industry firms hoping to make big money
with the technology were given abundant speaking time, very often two to
three times as much as the allowed five-minute limit. This led to time
running out in the end. And only at the very end the slot was planned
during which most Civil Society speakers hoped to voice their concerns or
talk about the various court cases that consumers have won against
producers of media made useless by DRM. Thus the theme 'Developments in
case law as well as relevant economic, social or cultural or technological
developments' was skipped from the agenda.

The Hearing - originally organized to help the Committee established under
Article 12 of the EU Copyright Directive, the so-called Contact Committee,
evaluate the way Article 6 of that same Directive is being transposed, was
thus turned into a self-reflection of the industry positions already
dominant within this Committee. The same applies for the so-called
High-Level Group on Digital Rights Management (HLG) brought together by
the European Commission. The European Consumer's Office, the only
organization present in that group not representing industry interests,
withdrew its support for the Final Report.

Even thought there are still lots of conflicts between content industry
lobbies like MPA and IFPI on the one side and hardware makers like
Panasonic and Apple, united in EICTA, on the other side, the main line of
conflict was between those industries and Collecting Societies like the
French SACEM, the Belgian Auvibel and the German GEMA. The Commission
obviously would like to reconcile the approaches of those two parties, but
does not know how to avoid double payment by consumers if DRM-protected
works should also be subjected to levies by Collecting Societies, levies
intended to compensate for private copying that can no longer happen if
the work is protected against copying.

Programme of the Commission Hearing (11.10.2004)
www.edri.org/files/EC_DRM_041012.pdf