Frabboni, Maria Mercedes --- "Collective Management of Copyright and Related Rights: Achievements and Problems of Institutional Effort Towards Harmonisation" [2009] ELECD 174; in Derclaye, Estelle (ed), "Research Handbook on the Future of EU Copyright" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009)

Book Title: Research Handbook on the Future of EU Copyright

Editor(s): Derclaye, Estelle

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847203922

Section: Chapter 15

Section Title: Collective Management of Copyright and Related Rights: Achievements and Problems of Institutional Effort Towards Harmonisation

Author(s): Frabboni, Maria Mercedes

Number of pages: 28

Extract:

14 Private copy levies and technical protection
of copyright: the uneasy accommodation of
two conflicting logics
Séverine Dusollier and Caroline Ker*



Introduction
The recourse to technology in the protection of digital copyrighted works has
raised many questions. Some of these have been discussed at length, for exam-
ple, the adequate scope of the legal protection of such technical measures
against circumvention, the relationship between technical protection and
copyright exceptions.1 Other issues, such as the interoperability of technolog-
ical protection measures or the inhibition of a normal playability of the work,
are emerging both in the lawmaking and the scholarship arenas. Amongst
those (so far) less discussed matters, lies a peculiar provision of the European
Directive of 22 May 2001 on the harmonisation of copyright in the informa-
tion society that requires Member States to take into account the development
of technological protection measures (hereafter TPM) when determining the
regimes of levies associated with the private copy exception.
Considering a possible link between TPM and the private copies levies
seems at first sight a rather logical and merely technical process. When a tech-
nical device prevents the very making of a copy, the compensation that is
collected for the possibility of making such a copy arguably loses its justifica-
tion. Should the overall number of private copies decrease by reason of the
increasing distribution of works wrapped in technical formats disallowing
their reproduction, the amount of levies compensating the prejudice incurred
for the rights owners would normally decrease accordingly.
...