PlayRight+ shares its expertise and monitors all legal and political developments in the field of copyright and neighbouring rights both at a national and an international level.

PlayRight+ also closely monitors all legal developments in the field of artists’ rights (taxation, social security, benefits, etc.). We make our expertise in this area available to the various institutions and interest groups in the sector.

Since 2014, Belgian legislation has been undergoing major changes for all rightsholders.

In combination with sustainable partnerships with organisations in the sector, this political vigilance allows us to work daily on innovative solutions that must guarantee a fair remuneration for the use and distribution of the repertoire of performing artists.

For instance, we are an active party in many consultative bodies, and we impose our requirements directly on the political world.

Actions on a national level

Since April 17, 2014, Belgium has a new legislation on copyright and neighbouring rights: all applicable laws were then bundled in what is called Book XI. PlayRight+ closely follows the evolution of all legislation applicable to performers (e.g. the reformation of the artist statute) and in particular the legislation on aspects related to neighbouring rights (e.g. changes in the taxation of neighbouring rights, the transposition of European directives on this matter,…).

Since 2019, PlayRight+ focuses particularly on the transposition of the Copyright Directive into Belgian law. This directive obliges states to guarantee an equitable remuneration for performers, even for exploitations that take place on streaming and sharing platforms.

Besides actions to represent the artists and close contacts with the political world (at all levels of power), PlayRight+ invests in media campaigns where necessary (e.g. the “Les Artistes a Poil” campaign in 2017).

In addition, PlayRight+ positions itself in advance of each federal election by drafting a memorandum containing our analysis of the situation of the performers and by proposing solutions at a political level to guarantee a better statute for our performers.

These are the latest memorandum:

Actions on an international level

PlayRight+ also collaborates with AEPO ARTIS of which PlayRight is a full member.

AEPO-ARTIS is the European Association of Performing Artists, consisting of European collecting societies. Its goal? Defending the rights of the performing artists in the context of the modernisation of the existing copyrights and neighbouring rights.

AEPO ARTIS wants the performing artists to be automatically entitled to an additional remuneration for the use of their artistic performances through video and music-on-demand services.

How? By introducing a right to an equitable remuneration for exploitation via online platforms – a principle that already exists for offline exploitation.

The collecting societies, which are specialised in processing large amounts of data, are in this case the most suitable for processing all user information from online exploitation. As such, they are real potential partners to perform tasks related to the calculation and individual distribution of artists’ rights.

For example, intensive lobbying at a European level and various actions that were carried out jointly in 2019 led to the “Copyright Directive”, for which PlayRight+ actively monitors the translation of that directive into Belgian law.