Festival de Cannes 2022 | Protection de la création: Denis Rapone's contribution to the CNC round-table discussion
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Dear friends,
I'd like to tell you how happy I am to be speaking to you today.
It's an immense pleasure to be able to meet up again, to see each other and to get closer after years of deprivation, and it's even more pleasant to do so in this managerial setting, on the beach of the CNC. I'd like to thank the CNC for welcoming us and for organizing this exchange in partnership with Arcom.
I'm speaking to you today in my capacity as a member of this brand-new institution, Arcom. This is the first time that this authority has worked in partnership on a cultural event of this scale, and I'm particularly pleased about it. A number of us have worked hard to create this new regulatory body, which is both more agile and more powerful than Hadopi and the French Superior Audiovisual Council, in the service of creation. I'm delighted that it is now taking its place alongside you, alongside creation.
We share a common fight: to protect French creativity and its vitality against the predatory scourge of piracy. It's been a long time (since 2014, when Mireille IMBERT QUARETTA submitted a report to Aurélie Filipetti on the need for operational tools to prevent and combat online counterfeiting) that we've been summoning new means to fight the development of unlawful practices. Today, we've got it: the public authorities now have extended powers to protect creation, and all we have to do is seize them and deploy them with pugnacity and determination!
We're not starting from scratch, of course...
1 - Remarkable work has been accomplished over the past 10 years
Rights holders have achieved exceptional results over the past 10 years. It's important to pay tribute to the work you have patiently and tirelessly carried out, multiplying legal actions to obtain the blocking of services that organize counterfeiting for profit. I believe that in the 10 years we've been at it, not one of the legal actions you've taken has ever been lost. Hundreds of unlawful services are currently subject to blocking measures, which first helped to stem the increase in piracy, then, since 2017, to achieve its steady regression.
Of course, the public authorities, through their approaches to Internet users, have also played their part in this collective effort to fight piracy. Graduated response proceedings, communication campaigns and awareness-raising initiatives aimed at schools and the educational community have all contributed to helping users adopt digital practices that are more respectful of royalties.
2 - Despite the combined efforts of public authorities and rights holders, there are still challenges to be met.
As you will see from the speeches that follow, unlawful practices remain high - too high... Several million Internet users continue to visit illegal services every month. Rights holders are forced to take legal action against services whose unlawfulness is beyond doubt, and services subject to blocking orders often reappear, alas, in the days following the judge's verdict, from a slightly different address.
These serious and repeated infringements of royalties, perpetrated on a massive scale, are unacceptable. The creative sector, which has borne the full brunt of the health crisis, needs all its energy to give French culture the vitality and richness of which we are so proud. Piracy is holding it back.
What's more, the digital world is constantly developing. Those who organize online counterfeiting are ready to rival each other in ingenuity to undermine the strategies deployed by the defenders of creation. The fight agains piracy must be a dynamic policy, always ready to renew itself.
It's time for the public authorities to step in, and forcefully frame their actions in the context of the new opportunities available to them.
3 - New opportunities
The law of October 25, 2021, which created Arcom, also endowed it with new means of action to better ensure, alongside rights holders, the protection of creation on the Internet.
Henceforth, the authority can identify unlawful services upstream of judicial proceedings brought by rights holders and, at the end of these proceedings, directly demand the blocking of services attempting to circumvent the verdicts obtained before the judge.
Arcom has had the opportunity to implement similar schemes to protect sports events and competitions, and the results obtained after just a few months are, as you will see, spectacular.
We are delighted that France has chosen to make the protection of creativity and the eradication of piracy a major objective of public policy. This objective can only be achieved through the combined determination and mobilization of all those involved in the creative sector and the public authorities. I'm confident in the success of this common fight, which is nothing less than the preservation of our cultural diversity and its creative talents. A very fine fight indeed!
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In figures | Sports-related and cultural content piracy
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