The last year will surely be remembered as one of the most prolific, for the debate over copyright protection online, both in court rooms and in research institutes.

Among the many contributions of doctrine, it is very interesting to note a report by the European Audiovisual Observatory, redacted in late june 2011, available at the following address: http://www.obs.coe.int/oea_publ/iris/iris_plus/iplus4LA_2011.pdf.en
.
The author of such article, Francisco Javier Cabrera Blázquez, focuses on the comparation of the two main streams of contribution to make private copies:

- the so-called “fair compensation”, especially related to the levy on blank medias, one of the most adopted measures in the EU, with all the necessary limits of proportionality and adequateness, as stated also by the Padawan v. SGAE case (European Court of Justice, case C-467/07, decided the 21rst of October 2010, available at the address: http://curia.europa.eu/jurisp/cgi-bin/gettext.pl?where=&lang=en&num=79898978C19080467&doc=T&ouvert=T&seance=ARRET);
such measure entails a necessary unpopularity rate among the public, but is
largely tolerated.

- the “file-sharing levy”, considered by some experts as a way to spread on every internet user the costs of piracy, decriminalizing file-sharing of copyrighted material, and implementing a general tax on internet connection, to raise funds for cultural development. Application of a similar measure, if effectively realizing more cashflow in the short period, is however extremely dangerous to maintain in the long period, since it might bring to a higher rate of piracy and so progressively dry up cultural production, highly penalizing those artists and productors it should instead help supporting.

In any case, the analisys of the European Audiovisual Observatory offers a view
that, if not updated to the latest trends and policies in the EU, still highlists the fact that very few has been done in Europe, during the last years, to properly boost up legal distribution of multimedial works on the web:  it seems, indeed, that legislators are still stuck patronizing afflictive measures that, instead of helping, backstab those categories (productors, artists, musicians and so on) it should help.

On december, 22nd, The European Commission published on its own web site:

http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/newsroom/cf/itemdetail.cfm?item_id=7699&utm_campaign=isp&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=newsroom&utm_content=tpa5

the annual report on the progress of key issues of the Digital Agenda.

As often happens, from this official report lights and shadows have emerged concerning the real progress of the EU towards the concrete realization of the principle items of
the Agenda (for more information see

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:52010DC0245R 01):EN:NOT).

Here we just wants to outline that the following items are, with no doubt, interesting for the audiovisual sector:

-      The anticipation concerning the next revision of the Enforcement Directive on Intellectual Property Right’s (the original version has at least ten years, as it was done in the 2004);

-      The attention dedicated to the dialogue between “players” in the market concerning funds for copyright: although it is an anusual practice, it’s having growing approval in the European scenario;

-      The referring for the next three-year on the need to adopt measures to meet the growing demand of “Ict” services, financement to creative and cultural industries production’s and to their digital development;

-     Deserve special attention the proposals concerning alternative resolution systems on online controversies proposed to protect users, which aim is to reduce the contentious in the digital sector. Moreover the announced revision on the guide-lines on State aid to the broadband development, a prerequisite for the broadcast and the digital content on Internet.