PRS Spots Elephant In The Room

The safe harbour hosting provisions are the music industry’s “elephant in the room,” he told the Westminster Media Forum’s “Next Steps for the Music Industry” session. Under the EU’s e-Commerce Directive published in 2000, safe harbor can allow – under certain circumstances – providers of certain online hosting services to be exempt from liability for copyright activity taking place on their service.

Ashcroft believes the directive needs some clarification and calls on the next government to use this autumn’s copyright review to do that. “I do think that a lot of business models, which didn’t exist [in 2000] when the Copyright Directive and e-Commerce Directive were created, have come in and snuck under the wire,” he told the Westminster Forum. “They’re laughing at us, they’re not paying their dues – and that is the elephant I would like to see us address,” he said. “Speaking on behalf of our members, I do not consent to unlicensed services aggregating, distributing and curating our members’ content.

“And I do not consent to being told the terms under which other platforms will pay token amounts of money to rightsholders.”

Ashcroft’s comments came a couple of weeks after former Conservative MP Mike Weatherley ramped up his fight against on online music and video pirates. He’s already called on internet service providers to stop hiding behind the safe harbour provisions and do more to help the fight against piracy.