The law on copyright and related rights is nonfunctional, said copyright owners. According to them, the law adopted by Parliament last year contributes to the failure of the sector and something like this is unacceptable in a state that obtained the EU candidate status. According to copyright owners, the law darted by the State Agency on Intellectual Property (AGEPI) caused a legal vacuum that that does nothing but encourages piracy, IPN reports.
Under the new law on copyright and related rights, the copyright associations were to be warned by the AGEPI and to obtain the status of collective management organization, but none of them has been issued with such a notice so far. This means that at the moment, any use of songs on radio, TV or in recreation places is not legal. Respectively, the payment for authors is not collected.
“It has been three months of the coming into force of the new law, but no public association was issued with a notice by the AGEPI for working as a collective management organization. This means the area of copyright and related rights is outside the legal framework and any use of songs on radio and TV is illegal,” the head of “Copyright” Association Liviu Știrbu stated in the program “Résumé” on RliveTV channel.
For his part, doctor habilitation of technical sciences Eugeniu Turuta said that owing to the created legal vacuum, piracy is promoted nationwide and this is unacceptable in an EU candidate state. The new law safeguards the interests of large companies that import technical equipment and that were earlier obliged to pay a tax of 3% as compensatory payment.
“The current law does not work. I think this was done in the interests of big companies that import equipment on which compensatory payment is levied. The musical works, videos, books are mainly distributed through the Interne. With or without the permission of authors, the works are placed on particular servers. When this is done without the permission of authors, this is piracy. But the authors are not able to control the downloading of their works and the EU therefore decided to allow downloading original works of authorship without the permission of authors. But the equipment through which this is done, for example TV sets and telephones, should be taxed when it is imported. As a result, the compensatory payment that was earlier of 3% was decreased to only 0.3%,” stated Eugeniu Turuta.
The law on copyright and related rights was passed by Parliament on July 28, 2022 and came into force on October 10, 2022. The document was worked out by the AGEPI with the aim of ensuring a higher level of protection for copyright owners. Representatives of the AGEPI haven’t yet commented on the accusations made against the authors of the law.
