France

[FR] Agreement between YouTube and SACEM on Royalties

IRIS 2010-10:1/32

Amélie Blocman

Légipresse

After four years of discussion, the SACEM and the on-line video site YouTube have announced the signature of an agreement, made public on 30 September 2010. This is the first agreement the site has reached with a French royalties society.

The SACEM is a collective management society whose purpose is to represent and defend the interests of writers, writer-producers, comedians, composers and editors of music with a view to promoting musical creation. Its main task is to collect royalties and to redistribute them to the beneficiaries of the works that have been played or reproduced. Under this agreement, all artistes whose work is managed by the SACEM will receive remuneration for their work shown on YouTube, i.e., for every video containing music. The agreement covers the broadcasting on the on-line video platform of the global musical repertoire, particularly Anglo-American repertoires, of multinational editors, and of other works managed by the SACEM since the launch of YouTube.

The sums of money due to creators for the period from 2006 up to signature of the agreement are to be calculated on the basis of YouTube’s market share and the amounts paid by its competitors. For the period 2011-2012, remuneration for artistes registered with the SACEM will be paid on the basis of the amount of advertising revenue generated by the YouTube page on which the video is posted. The agreement, which is in line with YouTube’s desire to foster the creation of content and reward artistes whose work is available on-line, is valid until 2012.

According to SACEM’s CEO, "This agreement demonstrates once more the willingness of SACEM to promote the legal use of works online, especially on video-sharing platforms. Indeed, it is important and symbolic that YouTube, the largest video-sharing site, pay French creators when their content is discovered and viewed on the site.” However, the agreement only covers music; YouTube also needs to negotiate in France with the society of drama authors and composers (Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques - SACD) and the civil society of multimedia authors (Société Civile des Auteurs Multimédias - SCAM) for the videos to be fully covered.