Digital piracy of editorial content – ??books, newspapers, magazines and sheet music – has skyrocketed. And the situation is more serious in Spain because piracy by Spanish-speaking Internet users is 15% higher than in the rest of the countries. But the problem for the sector, which contributes 1% of Spanish GDP, becomes more pressing because the increased piracy is accompanied by its own problem. That distances us significantly from our European neighbors and puts the sector at a competitive disadvantage compared to other EU countries: the little or nothing that most companies and public administrations, from ministries to schools and libraries, pay to reproduce their content. , be they fragments of books or articles from newspapers and magazines, for communication and internal and external reports or for the virtual campuses and daily classes of educational institutions.
Although rates are 38% cheaper than the European average, in Spain you pay only 0.48 euros per inhabitant per year compared to a European average that is triple that, 1.52, and in Finland reaches seven euros. One of the areas where it is most painful is in the reproduction of content from the written press: for clippings for companies and institutions in the United Kingdom, 44 million are paid a year in rights, in France 17 and in Spain, 1.2, according to a report directed by Julio Cerviño, from the Carlos III University, for the Observatory of the Sustainability of Written Culture. An observatory promoted by Cedro, the non-profit association chaired by the writer Carme Riera and which defends the rights of authors and publishers of books and periodicals. The general director of Cedro, Jorge Corrales, emphasizes the imperative need for administrations to comply with their own laws and lead change, setting an example for the private sector. If in our environment 55.82% of the remuneration for these rights comes from the public sector, in Spain only 7.54%. Public administrations should pay 25 million euros each year. They barely pay one.
“They use paper or digital copies of books, newspapers and magazines for training, information and documentation, but there are practically no public administrations that are respecting copyright. In clipping, few have the license to distribute the articles internally, just five or six ministries,” says Corrales. And he emphasizes that in primary, secondary and high school, compliance is testimonial, “no community has regularized the use of copies in their centers.”
Remember that the payment of these rights “is a way of supporting authors and publishers so that they can continue creating, it gives sustainability to the entire ecosystem, but in addition 80% of what the administrations pay will be recovered through greater activity and taxes”. “If editors and creators are not remunerated for their works, it is difficult for them to diversify their productions and look for new talents. What generates the lack of leadership on the part of the public administration is the weakening of the main Spanish cultural industry,” concludes Corrales, who adds one last factor to the sector’s problems: the current blockage of compensation for the right of private copying – for articles that citizens copy for personal use – from the publishing sector due to non-compliance with the agreement signed by all entities in 2023.
