Open Letter: Dear Mister Minister, Mr. Van Quickenborne,

Common Rights

The growing digital market has been glowing with possibilities for any artistic talent to create works, show and distribute them towards the world, for fairly cheap prive and in the most alternative forms imaginable. There are even alternative licenses on the market, like the known Creative Commons platform, which allows more around copying and distribution of protected works. This doesn’t need the artist to join artists-right organizations, while claiming all rights away with a signature and being limited with the promotion and distribution and more of her/his own works.

Technology has strived forward with micro-components, where the known walkman has become nothing larger than the size of a cigarette lighter. It is because of this digital age around micro-technology, that the passion to create music has never become so easy and cheap, through digital recording methods. Although, a work in production will take a lot of space, LOTS of space; mostly even more than 20x of a finished piece; because of all separate tracks (multitracks), samples, formats and extras involved with the production of such.

Still, it is not to be ignored that in the 20th century, works are being copied illegally; even on larger scale. That’s why there has been the start-up of Auvibel; the organization collecting taxes on all writable media like CD’s, DVD’s, K7, minidisk etc. This tax has to be paid by every end-user in Belgium, even when the media has been used only to store own works on. The collection of this money goes to rights-organizations. This is very bad to digest by many Belgian artists, because they are not getting any money of this entire operation, unless we sign away our rights to such rights-organizations like Sabam.

It doesn’t stay with this, Auvibel will start at 1 february 2010, to collect a tax on all disk drives, memory cards, usb-sticks, mp3/mp4 players and set-top boxes.

So, we, producers of the new digital world have to pay more taxes on media which we are using exclusive to store and manipulate our own works; while this tax benefits only a small amount of artists, the members of a “rights organization”. Also very important, newer devices like sequencers, samplers, sound modules use memory cards, disk drives and usb-sticks massaly by the dozens, which all will be taxed soon?

Why, does the indie artist have to pay for the lost income and compensate for the other artists, while we can’t even have the same arrangement and only have to caugh up money? We don’t even get a chance for adoption for other license terms with these rights-interest organizations and we are already getting taxed for more giving away money to these organizations not wanting to support us without draconian signout deals.

There are a lot of Belgian artists not wanting to connect to a rights-organization like Sabam, for variour reasons:

• They won’t get a choice what can be done with their own works regarding distribution and conditions;
• Different new distribution methods are being taxated with the old stamp;
• Sabam artists cannot create free music without being collected (CC, freeware);
• You can’t burn your works on CD to promote yourself without paying their own tax;
• Because of the agressive tactics this organization has (party’s, cafe’s and CC usage);
• Works under your own name are automatically property of Sabam; even if the artist does not want this

In the US there is a system where “Creative Commons” licenses work together with “Copyright Control”.

This is already adopted by very known artists like Radiohead and NiN and is in discussion with our neighbour countries , the Netherlands and France; so why can our own Belgian artist can’t be him/herself, without being mentally forced with their own works? This shouldn’t be a trap but a challenge for our Belgian talents.

Maybe, it’s urgent to change things from the past towards the future, because the current business model of a license on cd, is not anymore the only product available on the market. They changed the business-model slightly in the US, because the cat is already out of the bag since the digital age has allowed quick production and reproduction. Artists can choose their own license and distribution model, where they are quicker motivated to connect to a rights-organization defending their believes without shooting themselves in both feet.

European stores are very afraid to sell/export their storage-media products to Belgium, because of the strict regulation of import by Auvibel. This has changed our market to only a few familiar brands to be available in the Belgian stores, making it impossible to get better and designed cd’s and dvd’s without being outside the country. The market is very closed with this, where Belgium looses a lot of income with the use of new technologies which our neighbour countries already have for some time on their markets.

By charging this tax, you will punish the common artist of the future and you won’t leave a positive image, that our new, innovative digital world and it’s social happening gets embraced and supported, which the Belgian culture and market will only helps to get bigger. Our neighbour countries already have given a nice signal towards their artistic talent and I hope little Belgium will do the same towards the entire creative happening of audio and video.

As end, here a few links:

• Homerecording.be: open letter of artists protecting themself against the Auvibel tax
• French deal highlights open licensing and collecting societies in Europe
• Improbable Match, CC And Collecting Societies In Europe
• CC-NL/Buma pilot for flexible rights management
• Muziekindustrie, wake up for alternative licensing!
• Sabam, really for the common? (open letter in progress)
• Facebook group: against the Auvibel Taks

I am convinced that my letter will give you some insight towards a revision of your decision, hereby I sign,

yours sincerely,

I’ve been DJ, dedicated music collector and producing loops, now for over 15 years; but the real deal started in early 2008, when my studio was finally returned back into fully working production state.

I’ve started finishing my older productions and released them as lower quality 128kbit mp3’s with Creative Commons+ license through my website.

The idea, is pretty simple, those lower quality files can be shared with anyone, but whenever you needed cd-quality with added bonuses or money would be involved, I’d need my cut of the share in this.

This was made possible through Creative Commons using CC+ licensing, which allows you to license any work for commercial gain through the use of the normal Creative Commons official deed.

It can be considered the “direct link” between consumer and artist; making more for less money. In the future I’m even planning to offer my own platform to other artists which is already in test for some time by myself as we speak…

The direct link is often not the best and only link but it adds up to the total of the artist, while, there are also quite a few different types of music available on this planet.

1. The most known is the commercial music, known from radio and TV which gets pushed by only a few of the major labels in the top charts …
2. Indie music, not in the top charts but quite often with quality music , mostly even better than the real commercial top music…
3. Non-commercial music, experimental or not commercial enough, adored by music lovers.
4. The unreleased music, special releases and also bootlegs, with really quite some good stuff in it!

Indie bands are growing like mushrooms out of the ground because creating music is not that expensive as it used to be in the eighties. Electronic devices have gotten a lot smaller, sometimes easier but for sure more functional; personally, I prefer my old midi rig above a PC controlled patchbay!

Creative Commons could bridge the Artist-Consumer problem of finding less or non-commercial music on the net by getting quality in return by supporting the artist. Artists would then be able to, for example, send a CD of their latest productions, still in line with a license protecting their works.

This, of’course, could not be the major income of an artist; since it’s based on rather new ideas & technologies and that’s where mechanical rights and perhaps the more commercial music could come in mind.

“Any artist should be able next to his ideals, to create their own productions, even for commercial gain.. Right? .. ”

I’m not sure that’s really true in Belgium or in Europe!

Like any artist would do, I’ve joined the major Belgian author associations like Simim, Uradex and Imagia but I’ve failed of joining Sabam simply because of one thing: Trust!

It seems to be unable to register as an author and create free music. As soon as you join Sabam you’ve got to sign away all your rights for now and for the future; all your music will belong to them! When Sabam sees a song with your name in it, they will collect, even if the work is based on a Creative Commons license!

Their reasoning seems to be towards being unable to spot the differences, although, I’ve been proposing to add a CC+ tag to all of my CC productions but that wasn’t accepted. I’ve proposed if I could create my Creative Commons+ files under another nickname which I’d not register with Sabam but alas, that would be too good to be true…

“Whenever you join Sabam as author or composer, it will be for all music you’re author or co-author of. It’s not possible to collect for some songs through Sabam and collect through another. With Creative Commons licenses you’ve always got the risk Sabam will collect money anyways…”

Their own (translated) response is “Whenever you join Sabam as author or composer, it will be for all music you’re author or co-author of. It’s not possible to collect for some songs through Sabam and collect through another. With Creative Commons licenses you’ve always got the risk Sabam will collect money anyways…”

What kind of monopoly is this? Supported by the government ran through exclusivity contracts?

Isn’t Sabam created in purpose to support the common artist?

Not only this is a small problem, imagine the next one!

Once you’d need to publish any CD, a non-intervention statement needs to be signed by Sabam, allowing the CD manufacturer to start pressing that particular CD.

No non-intervention statement is no press! As cherry on top, you cannot demand a non-intervention when you are member of this agency which would allow them to collect royalties; even on a cd with only Creative Commons works. I’ve had to create a letter stating “I would not be joining in the near future”, this only because I wanted PERMISSION (in limited amounts) to release my own CD, which I’ve got 9 months later!

It’s one vicious circle because as soon as you want to earn on those Mechanical Rights; you’ve got to be member of them, loosing any artistic freedom to create music for other purposes than collecting money!

Our Dutch equivalent is currently pilot-testing a program with Creative Commons works; although anything released under the original artist name would be collected upon. This restricts the artist to only release music commercially -or- under a creative commons license but not both.

What if authors join forces combining their music giving away free CC samples for example? Belgium has not been touching this while CC is getting a full grown internet phenomenon.

This raises a few questions …

How could Sabam be even allowed such power to limit creativity at it’s best? Industrial lobbying at it’s best?

How could I ever create free art if they force me to copyright my works to their agency?

Where does that money go to from wrongly collected works?

How would you feel, You’ve got a killer voice and you’d like to sing a song free for the world, but Sabam would limit that because you are member?

Probably the same as how I feel now with this superficial legal limits opposed by Sabam!

I hope something gets done for the common artist!

I am feeling this is a tax to limit “creativity”, a word which sure isn’t licensed in their repertoire only!

Thank you for listening, tuning out!

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