Yet another grain for Meta, the company that controls (among others) Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, which “has been using our music content for years without having the necessary permissions”, to put it in the words of Sergio Cerruti, president of the phonographers association Italians.
Within Confindustria, AFI protects the economic interests of 760 producers and represents almost 10% of the independent Italian music scene: if it were a major, it would be the fourth largest in our country. And on the occasion of Mark Zuckerberg’s visit to Italyco-founder of Facebook and current CEO of Meta, has returned to point the finger at what would be “a daily case of legal piracy”.
The accusations
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Music that comes from outside
From what we understand, the point of contention is i music content that is shared on Facebook by other sites and that can be heard on Facebook: the example is that of a person who posts the clip of a song from YouTubewithout the author being paid those specific exploitation rights.
Obviously the record companies do not ask for the payment of every single song, just as (to cite a similar case) the publishers do not ask for the payment of every single news shared on social networks: the aim is to reach an agreement, to obtain a lump sum that somehow recognizes the creative work behind these pieces. “We are facing the creation of a non-competitive system which makes our market dysfunctional and which favors large companies – said Cerruti – which sign agreements with Meta at an international level, evading any responsibility of an economic and regulatory nature at the local level “.
From AFI, they revealed to us that they “told Facebook that we are willing to settle for a figure that is around 5 million dollarsa kind of amnesty for the last 10 years of copyright infringement “, but that” we have not been able to get a positive response “.
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The accusations against Facebook Italy
The other problem is that it is not even possible to have a measure of the extent of the phenomenon: “We have provided Facebook with a list of the traces belonging to our clients – Cerruti told us – asking them to verify if in some way they had been used on their platform “, but” we have not had any response “.
In addition to the request to the institutions to “protect us from sites like Facebook, which enjoy careful consideration on their part”, Cerruti did not fail to launch a dig at the Italian branch of the colossus of Menlo Park: “We have repeatedly tried to bring to their attention the economic damage they are causing to small and medium-sized Italian record companies, by proposing solutions to solve them. Nothing has changed except the awareness that the Italian headquarters of the company can be considered as a public relations company and that nothing can do to protect the economy of the host country “.
The editorial staff of Italian Tech asked Facebook Italia for a comment on the matter: we will update this page when we have their answer.