The European Court of Justice
The European Court of Justice has determined publishers are not entitled to compensation from levies collected by reproductive rights organisations (RROs) on hardware including printers and copiers.
The court ruled that the fair compensation provisions were intended to compensate rightholders for harm suffered as a result of the copying of their works, and that as publishers are not listed as rightholders in Article 2 of the 2001 Copyright Directive, they are not eligible for the two exceptions cited in the case.
Contesting the Belgian case have been HP and collection agency Reprobel, with the latter claiming that in accordance with the Article 5(2)(a) and (b) Directive, publishers are entitled to compensation when the OEM’s printers are used to print out one of their publications.
The Publishers Licensing Society (PLS), itself an RRO, said the court was “responding to a narrowly drawn question and appears on the face of it not to take into account any other international legislation which recognises the rights of publishers or the fact that publishers have shared in levies for many years before the 2001 Directive.
“The music industry (including music publishers) has benefited from levies since before RROs were even established. Accordingly there is an urgent need to seek clarification of European law”.
PLS said the ruling will affect RROs in Austria, Belgium, German and Spain, as the monies they collect are paid to publishers worldwide, although PLS said that none of its publisher subscribers would be affected.
The International Federation of Reproductive Rights Organisations commented that “it is evident from the ruling that the European copyright framework in the field of both reprography and private copying in the text and image sector is in urgent need of clarification”.
David Connett, Editor & Publisher of The Recycler, said: “A fee on a printer and cartridge would have been an easy way to make the licensing work. But that would probably wipe out the margin for HP Inc on some of their laser printers.
“As a print publisher we earn about $500 (€469) per year in royalties which represents just 0.0008 percent of our turnover, yet in the music world licensing revenues are significantly more, and even a budding artist will get 10 percent.
“Translate that into print magazine publishing and that would generate $60,000 (€56,300) a year and fund another journalist or two.”