From P2P Foundation

Berlin Declaration on Collectively Managed Online Rights

A declaration related to Open Access and Open Content goals. An example of a proposed solution that defends both free culture usage and author's rights:

Summary Text

"DRM and mass-prosecution of filesharers are not solutions acceptable to an open and equitable society.

• Primary goal of copyright lawmaking must be a balance between the rights of creators and those of the public.

• Collecting societies need to become more democratic, transparent and flexible, allowing their members to release their works under open-access, non-commercial licenses.

• With the collecting societies suitably reformed, the successful European experience with exceptions and limitations compensated by levies should be reviewed for possible application to the on-line realm.

• We urge the European Commission to consider a content flatrate to ensure compensation of rightsholders without control over users.

“Under the proposed system, rights holders would license their on-line rights to a collecting society for collective representation, as they already do for many off-line uses today. This on-line collecting society would oversee the measurement of transfers of protected works over the Internet and then compensate the rights holders based on the actual use of their files by end users. The funds from which the rights-holders are compensated could be raised through any of a number of sources: voluntary subscription payments by end-users or proxies for them or levies on relevant associated goods and services, such as broadband Internet connections, MP3 players and others, in addition to the levies on blank media, photo copiers, and so on which are already collected today.�? (http://wizards-of-os.org/index.php?id=1699)