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More collecting society regulation to be considered in Brussels
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 10 July 2012
After last week’s defeat of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement in the European Parliament, copyright talk in Brussels this week will turn to a different bit of legislation, the latest effort on the part of European regulators to reform the collecting society system, mainly with a focus on the more powerful publishing rights societies.
According to Reuters, a new bill to be published on Wednesday will propose new rules to force collecting societies to distribute monies it collects from media owners, digital service providers and the live, clubbing and retail industries more quickly to its members, ie songwriters and publishers, and to force rights organisations to be more transparent about its fee structures.
Other measures in the bill will cover that favourite topic when European Union types consider collecting societies, moves to make more rights organisations licence more services on a multi-territory basis, something the EU has been pushing for in the collecting society space for years, with limited success (though arguably those societies and rights owners offering multi-territory solutions are more motivated by commercial potential than placating European regulators). The new draft reportedly offers songwriters to option to opt out of the collective licensing system where pan-European deals are not offered by their society.
Although welcomed by some songwriter groups – Kelvin Smits from artists’ lobby group Younison told Reuters: “It is time that the money collected in our name reaches the rightful author in a timely manner instead of being spent on marble car parks” – many collecting societies are likely to resist further regulation. The draft law reportedly positions some of the measures as being necessary to combat piracy, which seems dubious, though certainly some and possibly all rights organisations could do with some reform. Though, to be fair, most people agree the UK’s PRS For Music is among those societies that offers its members a pretty good deal.
