Jean-Michel Jarre calls on European Parliament to adopt Copyright Directive

Electronic music composer and CISAC President Jean-Michel Jarre spoke to European Parliament on June 26th for the "Cultural heritage in Europe: linking past and future" conference. With a key vote on the EU Copyright Directive to take place on July 5th, the speech also addressed the necessity for Europe to adopt the directive in order to ensure that creators are fairly remunerated.

For more information, and to sign a petition encouraging the European Parliament to help creators in Europe, as well as around the world, please see this petition.

Excerpts of Jean-Michel Jarre's speech can be viewed here.

The term "heritage" too often has a dusty and old-fashioned connotation: we think of old stones, old buildings, and remnants of bygone days. I am an artist who is often presented as a pioneer of electronic music. So you will not be surprised that my vision of heritage is a dynamic, digital and forward-looking one.

In each European family, there is a child, a brother, a sister, a mother, who dreams of becoming a photographer, a graphic artist, a writer, a filmmaker, a musician, and who will miss out on his or her dreams if we don’t come up with a fair business model for the 21th century -  and for the new ways we distribute and consume culture around the world, through the internet and new media.

If we want tomorrow’s European heritage to be as rich as in the past, we simply have to create the means to make that possible.

How is it that Verdi ended a decent life and Mozart ended in poverty? It’s because one enjoyed intellectual property rights and the other didn’t.What is at stake is the future of the creators of our continent, our culture, and the influence of our artists.

The laws have always lagged behind great technological revolutions. It is not a question of stigmatizing the big players on the internet and saying that the G.A.F.A are our enemies.  On the contrary,  they must become our interlocutors and our potential partners.

Creators are virtual shareholders of these companies, which are developing and enriching themselves through their creative content.  It is therefore essential to define a legislative framework to be able to start negotiations with platforms like YouTube, which define themselves as storage platforms and archives, and not as content platforms.

Those who are against regulating the Internet in the name of freedom of speech are like those who, in the early days of the automobile, refused traffic laws in the name of freedom of movement.

The value of creative works has been transferred to those who distribute the works. That's the whole problem.

Paradoxically, the creative industries have never been so prosperous, in terms of jobs and turnover. But the creators - the core of these industries - have never received so little. This anomaly has to be rebalanced.

Today the world is looking at Europe, it is an issue for creators from all over the planet. The directive, if adopted, will inevitably have a domino effect. Europe, so pushed back in recent years, now has an opportunity to show its relevance. Otherwise we will miss out on the next Almodovar, the next Coldplay or the next Houellebecq.

Copyright is independent of any lobby, and is the most timeless right available since it is not attached to a physical or digital medium.  It is attached to the work itself regardless of the medium by which it will be communicated in the future.

The creators are those who have always imagined the future, using the techniques of their time to push their creativity into the future. Whatis unacceptable is the idea that respecting intellectual property rights could be an obstacle to freedom of expression and a form of censorship.  Not enabling a creator to work is the ultimate censorship.

Artists are not always the best people to defend themselves and their work. They need you, the legislators, to defend them.

The right to intellectual property is one of the fundamental human rights, like ecology thirty years ago. We will be able to survive in this century, on the condition that we evolve with a good sensibility with nature and with technology, and that we give ourselves the means to do so.

Speaking of freedom, do we, in Europe, want to become digitally colonized? We must prevent YouTube from being an abusive monopoly, which in the long run would prevent the diversity of offers. Otherwise we will get closer to George Orwell's 1984. Listen, read, look at what you are told! Vote what you are told to vote! The whole issue is here.

Let’s respect diversity and respect creation. A novel, a film, a piece of music, a painting - these are not jars of yogurt or disposable products. Since the beginning of time who is censoring whom? The censors are the ones who hold all the power in their hands. This is clearly not the creators who have always been the victims and who have always struggled for freedom of speech.

The notion of intellectual property has taken nearly a century to become a concept accepted by all. The internet is twenty years old, so we are in the prehistory of the digital era. It is to be expected that organising regulation is  a little chaotic. It's still the wild west, but the problem today is that the wild west is where the Silicon Valley is located.

We have lost the hardware battle -  all the major communication and media outlets are American or Asian. Europe has the obligation not to lose the software battle, that of content. That is, the immense creativity which is the essence of our continent’s DNA.

A regulation allowing creators to receive a fair remuneration ruining companies earning billions of revenues? Let's be serious - there can only be a future for the digital world if it takes into account the people who contribute to create it.

What we want today is very simple: the problem springs from the fact that we are relying on ancient laws, dating from before the internet, to create the heritage of tomorrow. Give us the means to sit at the negotiating table so that European creators, and those from all over the world, can receive a fair share of the revenues generated by the distribution of the creative content that we create

Never forget that in a smartphone the smart part is us, the creators.