Minister Gentiloni: "A technical committee to revive cinema"
Funding European audiovisual works (with an updated revision of investment quotas from Pay TV), cinema reform and new distribution platforms are the principles guiding the Ministries of Communication and Culture in reviving cinema and the audiovisual sector in general, announced Minister of Communications Paolo Gentiloni to the Senate Cultural Commission.
Gentiloni announced new measures to be implemented in six months and said that his Ministry, together with the Ministry of Culture, will create a technical committee to identify the necessary changes. The committee will first and foremost have to tackle so-called secondary distribution rights, i.e. those rights related to the various distribution platforms, “so that owners of content are encouraged to make full use of all methods of consumption available”.
Secondly, the committee will deal with the question of collective rights, to guarantee “precise, transparent and efficient rules in all distribution channels”. To protect producers and rights, they would like to create an apposite section in the ROC (Registry of Communications Operators) for works broadcast on television.
The technical committee will also have to identify the measures for supporting historical archives and modify sanctions on piracy and file-sharing in order to “…strike at those organisations selling counterfeit work and deter the illegal circulation of digital material protected by copyright”, explained the minister.
They will also look into measures on User Generated Content, to define "a legal framework on the paternity of self-produced content by users and on responsibility, to protect Internet users themselves”.
Another important point regards the financing of European audiovisual works , which may also be broadened to include Pay TV. According to the minister, the investment quotas from industry operators obliged to contribute in backing European audiovisual products must be modified to include Pay TV broadcasters as well.
Lastly, Minister Gentiloni emphasised the need to back Italian cinema. According to Gentiloni, the policies for supporting the cinema of the future "cannot be limited to just widening the resources managed by the state, regions or local associations [because] a virtuous circuit must also take full advantage of the product”, thus avoiding cases in which films, despite receiving considerable public financing, receive overly limited releases or are never even make it to the screen.
(Translated from Italian)
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