<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:verdana,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:10pt"><div style="font-family: verdana,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">----- Mensaje original ----<br>De: Reinier Bakels <r.bakels@planet.nl><br>Enviado: sábado, 12 de abril, 2008 14:04:31<br>
<div style="font-family: verdana,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><div><font size="2">> I have written a lot of
text into the Wiki at: <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://int.piratenpartei.de/Levies_Questionnaire">http://int.piratenpartei.de/Levies_Questionnaire</a></font></div>
<div><font size="2">> But now we must make the
next step. PLEASE HELP! The answer is due within a WEEK from now!<br><br>Indeed, we need to close the text as soon as possible -setting the date for a meeting is up to you, though it would be better choosing monday or tuesday, to have time enough for translations.<br></font></div>
<div><font size="2"><br>> Many of the <u>factual</u>
questions are hard to answer however. The idea of a Wiki for the
international PP community was to<br>> allow everyone to enter the information for
his own country, but so far that only happened for Denmark, Spain, and my<br>> country, The Netherlands. But I found that even for your own country, it is
virtually infeasible to contribute all the<br>> requested numbers. In NL, levies are
collected by a separate organisation, but the redistribution is by numerous<br>> collective rights societies (I counted 12) who all have their own policy. So my
fellow Wiki writer (Carlos?) who used the<br>> work "opaque" a number of times is
VERY right, I am afraid. As I noted before, perhaps we should not even try to<br>> duplicate the work of the levy collecting organisation - who surely will respond
to this questionaire as well.<br><br>That's a huge problem, as almost any data is given to us by governments: they only ask us to pay.<br><br>Thus, in the questions you comment, Reinier, instead of not giving any answer, we can complain about this reality -for instance, EC uses in the questionnaire statistics given by GESAC, the european association of RMOs (in some cases and in spite of the lack of national examples commented by Reinier ... would have been needed that other pirate parties, specially French Parti Pirate who is suffering SACEM mobbing, have given their own data); it causes the EC to give the questionnaire and its background paper so much bias ...-.<br></font></div>
<div><font size="2"></font> </div>
<div><font size="2">> Another issue worth while
to <u>investigate</u> is that the levy society (Stichting Thuiskopie) suffers
from major problems to<br>> pay all the money it collected to rights owners. They had
so much cash remaining that they even considered to return<br>> some money to
the media manufacturers, which in turn was easier said than done. These problems
are also subject of<br>> increased parlamentary scrutiny, and yet other bodies were
estblished to oversee "Stichting Thuiskopie". It would be<br>> interesting to know
whether similar problems exist in other countries. If other levy collecting
societies have a similarly<br>> shady reputation, THAT IS NEWS TOO!<br><br>Do you know Luis Cobos? Recently it was discovered that the RMO where he's the Chairman has 41 million € of unpaid levies. So that RMO manage those quantities, investing them, obtaining interests and ... since 1996 Spanish RMOs haven't been audited -so nothing is known about what happens with such a huge amount of cash-.<br><br>Cobos' RMO is not the biggest, nor the richest Spanish RMO. Imagine what would may be happening with SGAE, the biggest one.
Regards,<br><br><br> Carlos
Ayala<br> ( Aiarakoa )<br><br> Partido Pirata National Board's
Chairman<br></font></div></div></div></div><br>
<hr size=1><br><font face="Verdana" size="-2">Tu correo también desde el móvil.<br><a href="http://es.mobile.yahoo.com">Descárgate gratis Yahoo! Go</a>.<br></font></body></html>