French President Emmanuel Macron defends authors’ rights in the digital environment

CISAC joined GESAC and authors societies in Europe in welcoming the speech (summary in English) on 26 September by French President Emmanuel Macron. Macron came to the defence of authors and their rights in today’s digital environment in a speech at the Sorbonne. 

Macron said:

What I want for Europe is not just to simply succeed in this digital transition, but to build a fair framework for it-a framework that will allow the defence of our values, the fundamentals of civilisation that are ours and the necessary economic balances. This is why, in this digital Europe, we must also defend authors’ rights. We must defend, everywhere it exists, the value created by those who truly create.”

“Would digital be the only continent where created value belongs not to the one who created it, but to those that transport it, those that bring it to the final consumer? If we are here today, if we have faced the challenges I evoked earlier, if we stand tall, it’s because we have the emotion and common culture, because authors are etymologically those who ground us and those who hold the true authority in Europe. Thus, authors’ rights must be defended in this contemporary digital space. For Europe’s dignity. For its capacity to exist and not dissolve into a continent of homogeneity. This means that, to make this transition succeed, we must defend the fair remuneration of all authors and all forms of creation in the digital world.”