The European Commission has today finalized its Creative Content Online In The Single Market paper and will make proposals for instituting pan-continental digital content regulations by the middle of 2008. The key proposals, designed to let digital content companies compete more effectively by smoothing perceived roadblocks in existing intellectual property and other rules:

—The commission calls on the industry to set aside piracy concerns through “innovative and collaborative solutions” and to make more content available digitally.

—It says there is “an underlying need” to tackle “the lack of multi-territory copyright licenses, (which) makes it difficult for online services to be deployed across Europe and to benefit from economies of scale.” For example, member states can currently bar musicians from using royalties collection societies in other EU countries because granting that freedom is currently only voluntary under European law - big labels protest that’s hampering their ability to sign continent-wide online rights deals and favor the creation of all-Europe royalties super-collectors.

—Frustrated by lack of interoperability in digital rights standards, it wants to draw up “a framework for DRM transparency”, which would include not just interoperability but ensuring customers are fully informed of DRM-specific content restrictions before they buy. This move may be arriving too late if other entertainment media following music labels’ recent moves to embrace DRM-free, however.

—The paper proposes “codes of conduct” be established between distributors, rights holders and customers on the issue of illegal downloading and sharing. Sounds like a rather toothless measure, but could be just the sort of thing that lets ISPs monitor customers’ net usage for illegal P2P activity.

Full analysis at our sister site paidContent:UK.

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