We, the undersigned, call on the European Union to address the issue of piracy and particularly live content piracy. Piracy has and continues to drain Europe’s creative and cultural ecosystems, sports and live performance sectors deprivingworkers and industries from billions in annual revenues and undermining the sustainability of an essential part of our social and economic fabric.
We call on the European Commission to deliver a legislative instrument to tackle live content piracy as a firm commitment from the European Executive branch to address this issue with adequate measures. Notably, guaranteeing that notified illegal content is taken down immediately and blocked before the live event terminates.
In so doing, we recall that such measures build on the existing corpus of European and national laws to deliver effective tools to fight and disable piracy networks. Networks incorporating a number of criminal operators that use piracy as a means tolaunder gains from illegal activities.
It is Europe’s duty to protect and promote its world leading creative and cultural workforce and industrial base as well as preserving consumers from the risks tied to piracy.
Any non-legislative instruments would be inadequate and insufficient to address the magnitude of the problem. Only a European wide regulation could provide an appropriate answer.
We encourage the European Commission to act firmly and rapidly towards proposing such an instrument.