In every copyright debate in Brussels, however fierce, there always seems to be a touching consensus that legislation needs to be fair and balanced, and that artists should be paid. But even this basic principle is put to the test when push comes to shove.

In the past months the debate over film release windows – media chronology as the French call it – has intensified.
But even if we’d rather do business as usual, there is no denying that the world around us has changed. The virtual is a reality.

Politicians’ actions speak louder than their words, and as artists and activists we must hold them accountable – both on the national and European levels – and scrutinize what is now done in the name of austerity – which to some has become a pretext for implementing very dubious policies.

Our problem is no longer distribution, our problem is attention. How to get and keep and convert that attention in order to live as artists? With this open access, there is a glut of content and, as consumers, how to know what to watch and where to find it? It will be through friends or through the tribe and more and more we are finding this work online. There will be a mass of niches, not a mass audience.

Sheri Candler
film marketing and publicity strategist

We in Silicon Valley undermined copyright to make commerce become more about services instead of content — more about our code instead of their files. We haven’t just weakened Hollywood and old-fashioned publishers. We’ve weakened ourselves.

Jaron Lanier

Over the past months I have been travelling to meet FERA members in Greece, Hungary and Portugal. I wanted to see and hear first hand what it is like to be a filmmaker in the countries that struggle the most right now.

On the eve of EU leaders arriving in Brussels for the euro crisis summit, ICT executives feasted on oysters and champagne, a spectacle that, at least in American politics, goes under the label of being “out of touch”.