More and more with audio CD sold in the trade are equipped with protection preventing the copy in the name of the fight against the hacking. The trouble, it is that this device makes not only impossible the copy deprived for personal use, which is, it, completely legal but also the reading of CD on certain apparatuses (computers, car radio, etc). The consumer in good faith is thus victim of a practice which finally lack its objective and is against the legislation on the royalties. In this context, Test-Purchases decided to require the suspension of this practice in front of the courts by quoting 4 large firms of discs, leaders of market (Sony, EMI, BMG, Universal Music).
For a few months, many consumers have complained about the restrictions on the private copy and the reading of certain CD. Test-purchases collected several hundreds of testimonys. Here some examples of inaudible CD on certain supports and for which the private copy is impossible in particular on PC, (an example by quoted company): for EMI, "My tribute to the King" of Helmut Lotti; for Sony, "Laundry Service" of Shakira; for BMG, "1 Giant Leap" of Faithless; for Universal, "Greatest Hits" of Bjo¨rk, etc. They are obviously sound works sold on a very large scale.
In a leading article published in February 2003, Test-Purchases stressed that the protection of audio CD missed its target by fight against the hacking (on a large scale) and undermined the elementary rights of the consumers to use CD as they wish it at private ends. It already asked with insistence that one prohibit such practices. To the same moment, an official letter was also sent to the Minister for the Economy of the time so that it intervenes in this direction. Contacts were also undertaken with the representatives of the sector but those could not bring the least solution or made promises without a future.
The technical processes used by the firms of discs to fight against the hacking are illegal: they prevent that any consumer who legally acquired and paid the rights on his original CD can carry out a private copy, expressly authorized by article 22 §1, 5° of the law of June 30, 1994 relating to the royalties. The author cannot prohibit the reproductions of sound and audio-visual works carried out in the family circle. In addition, n the other hand of the right to the private copy, the legislator expressly envisaged a particular mode of remuneration to the profit of the authors, whose plate is the selling price of the apparatuses allowing the reproduction of works like that of the virgin supports usable for this reproduction. The legal rule is thus clear, and the mentions "Copy controlled" or other can there nothing change. Test-purchases requires its application by the intermediary of the judge of the suspensions since there is violation of this rule by the companies of discs.
This 31 December 2003, Test-Purchases will quote 4 large companies of discs (Sony, EMI, BMG, Universal Music), world leaders and references on the Belgian market, for violation of the elementary right to the private copy, after having put them in residence on last 20 November. It asks the pure and simple abandonment restrictive practices concerned and the shrinking of CD equipped with systems anti-hacking. The "majors" must tackle the true problems of hacking rather on a very large scale than with the consumer in good faith who discharged legal royalty and which is discriminated in its rights. The action in suspension will be brought in front of the President of the Court of 1st Authority of Brussels in order to prohibit the practices of the companies of discs.
Test-purchases requires this manner a change in the attitude of the large firms of discs because to copy CD at private ends is not an offence. Also there Test-purchases poses an important gesture in order to underline the need for the maintenance and defense of the right to the private copy, in particular within the framework of the next transposition in Belgian right of the directive of May 22, 2001 on the harmonization of certain aspects of the royalty in the company of information.