"Extended collective licensing", a legal tool to be introduced in French law in May 2021, would give authors' societies the role of collecting and redistributing the amount of royalties owed by platforms (YouTube, Facebook and others) to content to content creators. The UPP supports the legislative steps that aim to put in place mechanism of remuneration of authors by platforms.
The 2019 European Copyright Directive has established the principle of liability of content sharing platforms for works uploaded by their users and distributed on their site. The corollary of this principle is that these platforms must now negotiate and enter into licensing agreements with artists and authors so that they remunerated for the use of their works.
The Directive provides that "extended licensing agreements" may be signed for this purpose. This means that for each repertoire (music, image, video...), a collective management organisation (also called a "collecting society") will be able to sign an agreement with the artist or author (also known as a "society of authors") will be able to negotiate with platforms on behalf of all authors in its repertoire. It will then be responsible for collecting the amount of royalties owed by each platform for broadcasts of its repertoire, and then to distribute this sum among the authors whose works have been broadcast.
The Union of Professional Photographers, through its Board of Directors, is committed to working alongside the political and administrative bodies that are working to implement this solution so that artists and authors can finally receive fair remuneration for their creations.
The UPP hopes that the mechanisms that will be put in place will fall within the framework of legislation on copyright as it exists in France. It is essential that each use be identified and that the remuneration of authors be proportional to the use made of their work. Any "flat-rate" solution that does not comply with the Intellectual Property Code, any minimum threshold (in terms of duration, digital weight, etc.) below which platforms would not be obliged to declare the communication to the public would be a serious infringement of French Authors rights. This will require a commitment on the part of the various parties involved: the photographers by providing the metadata necessary to identify their works, and the their works, and the platforms by transmitting to the OGC the exhaustive numerical data of the content distributed.
Press contact UPP :
Matthieu Baudeau - 01 42 77 24 30 - president@upp.photo - www.upp.photo
About the Union of Professional Photographers
Union des Photographes Professionnels - Accueil (upp.photo)