This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Business News Labels & Publishers Top Stories
Artist group hits out at elements of Europe’s collecting society reform proposals
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 13 July 2012
Artist lobby group Younison has hit out at elements of the previously reported proposals published by the European Commission this week regards reforming the collecting society system.
As previously reported, European officials want royalty collecting organisations – especially those that collect music publishing royalties for publishers, songwriters and composers – to be more transparent, to pay collected monies out to creators faster, and to start licensing digital music services on a pan-European basis (EC types have been banging on about the latter point for years).
Although Younison welcomed the European Commission stepping in to improve the collective licensing system, it has hit out at certain elements of the proposals that have been published this week, accusing European Commissioners of going back on promises to take a creator-centric approach to the new rules. An open letter from the group says: “We are deeply disappointed by your choice to defend the interests of a minority of managers and stakeholders”.
The main area of controversy in the new proposals for Younison is so called orphan works, compositions where a collecting society collects a royalty from a licensee, but doesn’t know who owns the copyright. Orphan works are always problematic because it is difficult to hold societies (or licensees) accountable for royalties unpaid to unknown rights owners forever.
But, Younison says, by proposing that societies can keep any money they are unable to distribute (because of unknown authors) after five years, as this week’s proposals do, you provide an incentive for less reputable royalty organisations to deliberately not go out of their way to identify rights owners. Or in Youison’s words: “This encourages the collecting societies to keep the money they owe, and reduces the incentive to find the rights-holder. You thus legitimise one of the most problematic forms of embezzlement adopted by some collecting societies in Europe”.
It remains to be seen how all the collecting societies in Europe respond to these proposals, given the reforms are more heavily targeted at some more than others. For its part, UK society PRS For Music welcomed the developments, with top man Robert Ashcroft telling CMU: “The Commission has outlined a new framework for consistent and high standards for transparency and accountability to the members that we welcome as the route to building further confidence in collective management”.
He continued: “We also like the standards-based approach to data and processing capability to support multi-territory licensing, because it will provide the incentives for the market to develop and aggregate on a voluntary basis. As a membership society, owned by its members and governed by a board of directors elected by its membership, PRS For Music has always set the standard for good governance and will continue to do so”.
