Film people demanded, among other things, guarantees of royalties from the Internet, digital platforms and cable networks, as well as fair remuneration for voice actors working on dubbing, audiobooks, radio plays and radio shows.
“This is important for actors and creators because it is the payment we deserve for the contribution of our work. Streaming royalties are very easy to calculate because they are, in some way, dependent on the success of a given film. It is not the viewers who pay it, but the platforms, depending on the number of views, so it is proportional to the success of the film, series or other such project,” said Boczarska in an interview with the Newseria Lifestyle agency.
“It is also worth emphasizing that we, actors, do not have any stability, because we do not have full-time jobs outside of theaters, and very often, for some artists, these royalties are money that allows them to simply survive from one to the other,” the actress noted.
“We are monitoring what is happening with the act on copyright and royalties from the Internet and streaming platforms. Let me remind you once again that this is not any tax that people have to pay, it is about 1.5% that the platforms are supposed to pay streaming to creators who participated in the production of the film or series,” added actor Mateusz Banasiuk.
He also reminded that the regulations in force in our country are outdated and do not guarantee creators revenues from streaming and audiobooks. In return, they can receive royalties from the sale of VHS tapes and DVDs. The creators remind that the relevant regulation should have entered into force three years ago. Because this did not happen, the European Commission imposes a fine on Poland, which now amounts to PLN 50 million. Similar regulations exist in the United States and all other European Union countries.
Banasiuk added that “the current government is very open to dialogue, they want to talk to us, they invite us to meetings. This is a completely new political quality, which I am very happy about, so I believe that it will be resolved quickly and in a moment this “The case will have a happy ending for Polish filmmakers.”
From 2019, Poland was obliged to implement the EU directive on related rights in the digital single market. The regulations were to enter into force by June 2021. However, work on the act was stopped in 2022 after the visit of the former head of Netflix, Reed Hastings, to Poland.
Due to the failure to implement the regulations within the prescribed deadline, the Polish Filmmakers Association informed about submitting a report on the possibility of committing a crime. Mateusz Morawiecki's parliamentary office assured that the procedure for the act was legal.
The topic of royalties returned in February, when the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, led by Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz, proposed an amendment to the copyright law that would not provide remuneration to creators for distributing their works on the Internet. Poland remains the only country in the European Union that has not regulated this issue. In February 2024, Jan Holoubek, Mateusz Damięcki and Maciej Stuhr, among others, protested.
“Royalties are the last installment for our work, which is paid by television and cinemas from their profits. But the reality has changed so much that now we simply watch most films and series via streaming. And five years ago, the European Union introduced a directive that obliges states to Member States to regulate the law so that creators are guaranteed royalties, also for streaming,” said Michał Sikorski, known, among others, from the series “1670”, in a video published on the Instagram of the SFP Youth Circle.
On June 11, the artists returned to the Sejm. This is related to the first reading of the new bill, which was scheduled for 2 p.m. The protest was attended by renowned artists, including Agnieszka Smoczyńska, Juliusz Machulski and Feliks Falk, as well as actors Magdalena Boczarska, Maria Dębska, Agnieszka Grochowska, Michał Czarnecki, Eryk Klum Jr, Rafał Zawierucha and Anna Dereszowska and media people – Szymon Majewski.