The European cultural community is concerned. It feels it is under serious threat. The disproportionate offensive confronting it comes from the industrialists (electronic equipment manufacturers and information technologies). It aims for removal of private copy levies, which are a major source of revenue for authors, performers and their producers. The European Commission listens to the industry’s arguments and does not show itself to be sensitive in the least to creators’ interests, to the surprise of the Member States themselves.

Private copy levies exist in 20 EU Member States. They provide considerable satisfaction to the different interested parties without representing, however, a serious burden at all for the industry. It is the condition for private individuals to be able to make copies for their own private use as they wish. The mechanism alone can help ensure fair remuneration for their works to artists, creators and producers.

The industry has been lobbying European institutions for several months and public opinion without restraint and with no real basis in the eyes of creators. Hence the need for a reaction. To defend private copy, the artistic community and the content industry creates the “Culture First” Alliance. Indeed, the time has come to put an end to brazen propaganda based on spurious arguments and - intentionally? - erroneous figures.

Thus, statistics prove that private copy in no way slows the development of the online music industry and services (for both music and cinema). The penetration rate of MP3 players in the markets of France and Germany - countries with private copy levies - is similar to that of the United Kingdom, where no such remuneration exists. The amounts of royalties from private copy legitimately collected in the 20 member states concerned - much less than what is claimed by the electronics industry lobby for the sole purpose of misleading the Commission and the public - are growing reasonably and remain considerably less than the explosion of copy practices observed in the digital environment. While consumers purchase millions of MP3 players and content contributes more than significantly to the growth of the industry of information and communication technologies (ICT), that same industry proposes to dismantle a major source of revenue for the sector of creation.

Conversely, the negative impact of the possible suppression of this levy for creators is perfectly quantifiable. The total sums collected in the European Union for private copy amounted in 2005 to €560m (well under the €950m announced by the consumer electronics lobby). It is the entire industry that benefits from this system. Phasing out or freezing private copy levies would seriously affect the world of Culture in Europe. It is perfectly legitimate for manufacturers of recording equipment and/or blank media and importers whose business is very lucrative to depend in large part to the possibility given consumers to copy protected works, offer compensation to those who are at the origin of such content to the negative impact of private copy on their other sources of revenue. The levy they are requested to pay is limited (for a 4 Gb iPod Nano sold €259 in France, for example, it amounts to €8) and cannot jeopardize the competitiveness of the businesses concerned, as shown in their results. Thus, for example and to provide a scale of value, the €560m collected in 2005 for private copy can be compared with the profits of one of the giants of the ICT industry that same year: 1.34 billion US dollars.

Subject to intolerable pressure, the authors and composers of musical, audiovisual and literary works, authors of visual art works, performers, music publishers and producers of audiovisual or musical works, decided to pool their efforts. They are represented by: AIDAA, AEPO-ARTIS, AFI, BIEM, CISAC, EUROCINEMA, EUROCOPYA, EVA, FERA, EuroFIA, FIM, GESAC, GIART, ICMP/CIEM, IMPALA.

Thus, the world of Culture as a whole is mobilized once more to defend its rights and warn against a vision that is too exclusively commercial for European construction. Today, they wish to express their discomfort in the face of attacks against private copy levies and, more generally, the protection of their rights.