Giants of digital: film-makers ask for an intervention of the european Union

Claude Lelouch is one of the signatories.

Share

17 June 2020 14h26

Updated at 15.05

Share

Giants of digital: film-makers ask for an intervention of the european Union

Agence France-Presse

PARIS — Thirteen filmmakers europeans, from Almodovar to Lelouch, addressed Wednesday a letter to Thierry Breton, the internal market commissioner, asking to meet with him to “join forces” in order to impose a regulation to the giants digital non-european, mainly american, but also chinese.

“Requirement of the regulations, assent to the height of the stakes, the balance of diplomatic power, you have a glimpse of it, they write, that you were ready to assume these steps are vital so that the people can continue to tell, to themselves and to other nations: the original stories, the unexpected, the dramatic, special prototypes off the beaten track and away from the forked yoke of the big data platforms”, reminiscent of the filmmakers.

The letter is signed by Pedro Almodovar, Cristina Comencini, Luc Dardenne, Costa Gavras, Hugo Gelin, Jeanne Herry, Pierre Jolivet, Kamen Kalev, Claude Lelouch, Radu Mihaileanu, Cristian Mungiu, Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano.

While expressing their “appreciation” of the message of “force” that the commissioner “has addressed to the chief executive officer of Facebook”, they ask Thierry Breton of the meet “in order to invent together innovative solutions, bold and practical”.

“We believe more in the union of forces so that the vertical, was she virtuous”, note they.

“America was well understood by these cultural issues and industrial by imposing its cinema through the Marshall plan (…) today, its industrial are called GAFAN [Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Netflix] and they are a thousand times more powerful. And the containment has allowed them to accumulate wealth”, argue the filmmakers.

“The peoples of europe (…) have understood also that by evading tax, GAFAN contributed so little to financing of hospitals, education and all the vital mechanisms of the european democracies.

“Abandon this fight, highlighted by the filmmakers, is to open the way for the Big Brothers, is to accept that insidiously our european culture will disappear in a distraction permanent, reducing permanently the citizens into consumers. The champions of digital, whether they are chinese or american, will then be able to (…) place in the other areas because they will have colonised the minds of europe.”

In 1990, remind the filmmakers, the EU had raised the issue of the cultural exception, since adopted by 183 countries.

Brussels launched on June 2, a wide consultation to revise the rules to better regulate Facebook, Google, and other giants of the tech.

The Commission intends to unveil a new legislation by the end of the year (known as the Digital Services Act). Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Sundar Pichai of Google, spoke with senior government officials to try to defend their cause.

Le Soleil