Fair play demanded by the Council of States
The Council of States will discuss the revision of the Copyright Act on March 12. Creative artists are opposing a proposal that copyright royalties should no longer be levied on receivers in hotels and vacation homes, even though guests in such accommodation pay for the use of music and films on devices available there.
"Owners of hotels and vacation apartments would no longer pay copyright royalties in future," writes Swisscopyright in today's press release. It continues: "The Council of States will decide on this idea of dropping compensation owed to hoteliers next Tuesday. Musicians, filmmakers, actors and other creative artists would be the ones to suffer. They would then be subsidizing the hotel industry in Switzerland with their work instead of being fairly compensated for the commercial use of their works.
The proposal is based on a parliamentary initiative by Philippe Nantermod, FDP National Councillor VS. The small chamber would thus create a precedent: In December 2017, the Federal Supreme Court ruled that remuneration must continue to be paid for the distribution of radio and television programs in hotel rooms or vacation apartments if the necessary equipment such as televisions or radios are provided by the hotelier or landlord. Contrary to what the initiators claim, this is not a matter of private use.
International law would be disregarded - Swiss creative artists would be disadvantaged
A report by the University of Lausanne on behalf of Swisscopyright, the association of the five Swiss collecting societies, states that the new article created in the CopA would contradict the Berne Convention, an international treaty on the protection of literary and artistic works; for this reason, it could only apply to Swiss creators if Switzerland wants to comply with its international obligations. Swiss creative artists would therefore be discriminated against. A paradoxical situation would arise: Swiss artists would no longer receive remuneration, but hotels would have to pay for works by foreign cultural professionals. The regulation would also disregard other international agreements: the World Copyright Treaty WCT and the WTO free trade agreement TRIPS. This could result in economic sanctions against Switzerland."
No demand from the cantons
Swisscopyright also states: "According to the proposal, the new article in the CopA should also exempt hospitals and prisons from copyright remuneration," and notes that neither cantonal prison institutions nor hospitals have demanded this and that none of the institutions have declared that they no longer wish to pay remuneration to creative artists: "Once again, an exception would be created here solely at the instigation of the hotel industry. This unjustified measure would cause great damage to the cultural sector. Swisscopyright is calling on the members of the Council of States to play fair. This preferential treatment of hoteliers is neither necessary nor appropriate.
A hard-won compromise is at stake
The proposal ultimately violates the hard-negotiated and fragile compromise of the working group on copyright (AGUR 12). The demand to (suddenly) exempt hoteliers was included in the bill at a very late stage in the National Council. However, authors and rights holders made many concessions beforehand to make the compromise possible."
As far as the media release from Swisscopyrightthe association of ProLitteris, SSA, Suisa, Suissimage and Swissperform.
Offensive by music creators
The musicians are also fighting back in one of Sonart - Musicians Switzerland orchestrated campaign expressly against this proposal: "We are not subsidizing the tourism industry!" They are calling on the Council of States to reject the Nantermod motion. Sonart is calling on people to take part in the campaign on social networks and to meet up with the filmmakers on Monday, March 11, between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. on the Bundesplatz in Bern for a flyer distribution campaign.
Further information:
https://www.sonart.swiss/de/projekte-kampagnen/alle-0/urg-revision-12/
Addendum March 12, 2019
The Council of States has decided to postpone the debate. As the SDA writes, it wants to "await developments in the EU before deciding on the revision of copyright law". And further: "The reason for the decision is a controversial addition that the Commission had made: it wanted to charge internet platforms such as Google and Facebook for the benefit of media publishers when they publish text outlines and references to articles. The Council of States found that the proposal was not well thought out."
