Intangitopia Picks - Digital Europe

On Thursday, Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Telecoms and Media gave a speech on “Digital Europe”. An initiative for the next five years and how to boost Europe’s digital presence.

Have we really looked at the issue through the eyes of a 16 year old? Or only from the perspective of law professors who grew up in the Gutenberg Age? In my view, growing internet piracy is a vote of no-confidence in existing business models and legal solutions.

She asks herself an interesting question and the answer to it is in my view even more interesting. Think harmonized and easy ways of clearing rights between countries in Europe. Perhaps with only one internal market for all digital content...

First of all, we could facilitate the licensing of intellectual property rights for online services covering the territory of all 27 EU Member States . Today, right holders and online service providers need to spend far too much time and money on the administration of rights, instead of investing this money in attractive services. And consumers often cannot access online content if uploaded in another Member State. ... We had a similar problem when commercial satellite TV started more than 30 years ago. As right clearance for this per se cross-border service became increasingly complex ... I believe it is now time to develop similar solutions for the evolving world of online content.

The 1709 Copyright Blog also has a comment here.
A transcript of the full speech can be found here.

Johan Örneblad
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