The National Copyright Association notified the President of the Republic of Moldova, the Ambassador of the United States of America to Moldova, Mr. Kent D. Logsdon and the Head of the European Union Delegation to the Republic of Moldova, Mr. Janis Mazeiks on the new copyright law. The association claims it will weaken and endanger the rights of authors and OGCs representing them in Moldova.
Following the expertise of CISAC – the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers, harshly criticized the draft law, in terms of the specifics of the field of copyright worldwide, mentioning the following:
- “Unfortunately, however, and using the pretext of the 2014 EU Directive (2014/26), the new draft moves radically away from the well-developed regime above (which was already in line with the EU Directive) and paves the way for a potential system of dysfunctional collective management, which encourages the proliferation of unrepresentative OGCs and the possible parallel administration of the same category of rights by more than one OGC.
- Compensatory remuneration for private copying (“RC-CP”) is an essential source of income for all authors, performers and other rights holders, as demonstrated by the Global Private Copying Study published by CISAC in 20201. When properly implemented, it is the only effective mechanism that allows rightholders to be compensated for the damage caused by large-scale copying of their works for personal use.
-… CISAC considers that the draft law, contrary to its stated objective of modernizing and strengthening the protection of copyright and the collective management system by further harmonization with EU law, will weaken and jeopardize the rights of authors and CGUs that represents them in Moldova, if it is adopted by Parliament in its current form, as approved in first reading.
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According to the Anticorruption Expertise Report issued by the National Anticorruption Center to the draft law on copyright and related rights, it was found that the draft “… denotes multiple risks of corruption…”. At the same time, the NAC highlighted “the insufficiency of the justification of the initiated reform, the risks related to regulatory corruption and the deficiencies of the proposed wording of the project, accentuated the risk of harming the interests of copyright and related rights, which does not correspond to the public interest.”
In the draft law proposed by AGEPI, the Republic of Moldova will no longer comply with the International Treaties to which the Republic of Moldova is a party and the Association Agreement with the European Union, because the draft excludes and limits the fundamental rights of authors, namely: completely excludes the right to any protection of works in the Republic of Moldova, the authors of which are not citizens of the Republic of Moldova, excludes the author’s right to capitalize on his work, limits the author’s exclusive property rights, excludes the author’s right to apply to the court for recognition of copyright and infringement the exclusive patrimonial rights of the author and many others.
The National Integrity Authority and the National Anticorruption Center notified about several risks related to the exercise of attributions in case of conflict of interest, of a corrupt nature of the draft law, the National Association “COPYRIGHT” and the “National Association of Phonogram Producers and Performers”.
The draft law aimed at harmonizing copyright and related legislation with the regulations of the European acquis communautaire is made by forgery and is against authors. This is said by the representatives of the National Association “Copyright” and of the National Association of Producers of Phonograms and Performers (ANPFI). According to them, the provisions of the European Union Directives were copied without taking into account the existing provisions of national legislation and the realities of the Republic of Moldova, in the absence of specialized expertise from international organizations in the field.