The EU needs new rules for internet downloads that would make it easier for people to access music and films without resorting to piracy, the bloc’s telecoms chief said recently.
Mapping out the priorities for the EU’s executive arm over the next five years, EU Telecommunications Commissioner Viviane Reding said it should consider new laws that would reconcile the interests of intellectual property owners and Internet surfers.
“It will therefore be my key priority to work on a simple, consumer friendly legal framework for accessing digital content in Europe’s single market, while ensuring, at the same time, fair remuneration (for) creators,” she told a seminar.
Current laws are ill-devised, she said, because they appear to force people, especially the young generation, to become internet pirates, or download content illegally. At the minute, this can only be combated by expert telecommunication support.
“Internet piracy appears to become more and more sexy, in particular for the ‘digital natives’,” she said, quoting a survey that showed that 60 percent of people aged 16-24 had downloaded audiovisual content over the past months without paying.
“Growing internet piracy is a vote of no-confidence in existing business models and legal solutions. It should be a wake-up call for policy makers,” she told the seminar, organised by the Lisbon Council think-tank.
Reding is expected to seek the telecoms portfolio again when the five-year term of the current commission ends in late 2009.
She said her other priority was to speed up the digitalisation of books, with 90 percent of books in European libraries no longer commercially available.
The commission should also seek to encourage payments with the use of mobile telephones by proposing common rules for them.
“The lack of common EU-wide standards and rules for ‘m-cash’ leaves the great potential of ‘m-commerce’ and the mobile web unexploited,” she said.
The commission will work to popularise video-conferencing to cut the number of business trips, which would lower emissions of gases responsible for global warming.
“If businesses in Europe were to replace only 20 percent of all business trips with video conferencing, we could save more than 22 million tonnes of C02 per year,” she said.
She also urged EU countries to accelerate the switchover from analogue to digital television to free up airwaves for other applications such as mobile broadband.
“I call on EU governments not to wait until 2012, the deadline for the switchover. They should bring these benefits to citizens now.”
