During October, representatives from across the value chain gathered at the Creative Economy Conference in London to explore how the creative industries and other stakeholders can take advantage of the creative economy and respond positively to the opportunities that the digital revolution creates. Both the MCPS-PRS Alliance and British Music Right were major sponsors - putting creators at the heart of the debate.

Initiated jointly by the British Screen Advisory Council (BSAC) and the British Copyright Council (BCC), and with the support and participation of the UK Government (DTI, DCMS, and the Patent Office) and the Directorates General Internal Market and Information Society and Media of the European Commission, the conference enabled constructive discussion between the different sectoral interests. The objective of the conference was for a range of stakeholders across Europe, representing music, film & audio visual, publishing, telecoms, gaming, IPS', creators and consumers devise solutions through constructive dialogue.

The two and a half day conference began with a creators' panel which featured David Arnold, composer of the score for the last three James Bond films and the theme for Little Britain supporting the notion of collecting societies. 'We rely on (them) to protect what we're doing and to collect our money. They free us mentally to be able to write,' he said.

The Culture Secretary, Rt. Hon Tessa Jowell MP gave a keynote speech to the conference plenary session and highlighted how education, enforcement and consumer choice are the essential tools which will help to protect our creative industries from IP theft and secure the future prosperity of our creative economy. She also used the conference as a platform to respond the several recommendations made by the working groups of the Creative Industries Intellectual Property Forum. She also stressed the magnitude of the creative industries, which across Europe are worth at least €1.2 trillion and contribute over 3% of total EU employment.

Several working groups enabled collaborative discussion.

The 'value for all and more of it' group, chaired by Adam Singer, CEO MCPS-PRS Alliance, agreed how crucial copyright is, and that in this new era, everything becomes a subset of IP. Furthermore, there should be widespread respect for copyright by everyone, and that it should be built into the educational curriculum.

The 'global challenge' group looked at technical legal issues, such as the draft WIPO Broadcasting Treaty, as well as the WIPO Development Agenda. The issue of 'bars and grills', and the US's non-compliance with TRIPS implementation in so far as US copyright law not protecting the public performance of musical compositions in the majority of bars and restaurants, and other commercial outlets in the US, was again raised as an important issue which needed resolving.

The creativity to commerce group tackled a range of matters - from access to finance for creative businesses and the need for investors to better understand the value of IP as an intangible asset, as well as the need for fiscal and economic incentive to be considered by Government. The issue of better IP education and awareness was again reflected.

Whilst Charlie McCreevy, European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services, was unfortunately unable to attend and deliver his speech to the conference, the licensing group nevertheless made the most of their time, focussing their discussions on the impending European Commission recommendation on collective cross border management of copyright and related rights for legitimate online music services.

The conference was closed by DTI Minister, Lord Sainsbury, who delivered some strong statements on behalf of the UK Government, congratulating the music industry for facilitating new and innovative ways of making the creative products available to the consumers who want them, in the way they want them: "The [music industry] have looked at a whole mass of ways to offer music to consumers, from simple downloads to subscription models and, yes, peer to peer models, and are exploiting the enabling technologies such as DRM to give consumers unprecedented choice. They have recognised that business models need to evolve".

In conclusion, the conference was extremely successful in bringing together all parts of the value chain, and in spite of the fact being able to reach consensus in all of the working groups, several proposals have been delivered to both the European Commission and national Government. These recommendations will now be taken forward by the Austrian EU Presidency.

More information on the conference is available at: http://www.creativeeconomyconference.org/