p2pnet - rss feed: Europe music groups protest EC ruling
p2pnet news view Politics | Music:- The European commission will, “defy a high-profile lobbying campaign by composers and songwriters and order a new pan-European system of selling online music rights,” p2pnet posted yesterday, quoting The Guardian.
“Songwriters marshalled by Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees and including Bryan Ferry, Paul McCartney and Mark Knopfler have enlisted French president Nicholas Sarkozy and German chancellor Angela Merkel to back their campaign,” it said, continuing »»».
But despite their lobbying efforts and claims that hundreds of thousands of small writer and publisher firms would be wiped out under the proposed system, Neelie Kroes, EU competition commissioner, will rule against the monopoly of national groups that collect performing rights.
The European Commission has just announced it’s adopted an anti-trust decision banning 24 European collecting societies from restricting competition by limiting their ability to offer their services to authors and commercial users outside their domestic territory.
But, says the EC statement, “the decision allows collecting societies to maintain their current system of bi-lateral agreements and to keep their right to set levels of royalty payments due within their domestic territory.”
It goes on »»»
The prohibited practices consist of clauses in the reciprocal representation agreements concluded by members of CISAC (the “International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers”) as well as other concerted practices between those collecting societies. The practices infringe rules on restrictive business practices (Article 81 of the EC Treaty and Article 53 of the EEA Agreement). The Commission decision requires the collecting societies to end these infringements by modifying their agreements and practices, but does not impose fines. The removal of these restrictions will allow authors to choose which collecting society manages their copyright (e.g. on the basis of quality of service, efficiency of collection and level of management fees deducted). It will also make it easier for users to obtain licences for broadcasting music over the internet, by cable and by satellite in several countries from a single collection society of their choice.
Lyricists and composers, “sign over to collecting societies the rights to manage on their behalf, worldwide, the copyright of their musical works,” says the EC.
Based on the CISAC model contract, “collecting societies have concluded reciprocal representation agreements for the collective management of the public performance rights of their musical works so that they can each offer the repertoire of all the artists represented by all the collecting societies participating in the representation agreements,” it says, continuing:
“The public performance rights enable authors of musical works to authorise or prohibit the exploitation of their works by commercial users such as TV channels and radio stations, and to receive royalties every time their music is played.”
In particular, the decision requires the 24 EEA-based collecting societies which are members of CISAC to no longer apply »»»
- the membership clause, currently applied by 23 collecting societies, that prevents an author from choosing or moving to another collecting society.
- territorial restrictions that prevent a collecting society from offering licences to commercial users outside their domestic territory. These territorial restrictions include an exclusivity clause, currently contained in the contracts of 17 EEA collecting societies, by which a collecting society authorises another collecting society to administer its repertoire on a given territory on an exclusive basis and a concerted practice among all collecting societies resulting in a strict segmentation of the market on a national basis. The effect for a commercial user such as RTL or Music Choice that wants to offer a pan-European media service is that it cannot receive a licence which covers several Member States, but has to negotiate with each individual national collecting society.
The decision will allow collecting societies to compete on the quality of their services and on the level of their administrative costs (which are deducted from the money collected before it is passed on to the author), says the EC, adding:
“It will thus provide incentives to collecting societies to improve their efficiency.”
Predictably, CISAC says it “regrets” the ruling, says Music Week, quoting the organisation as declaring:
“The membership issue raised by the Commission has been overtaken by events a long time ago. The interests of the individual creator lie at the heart of collective administration.
“The principle that creators are free to join whatever society they choose is therefore already well established and widely applied by societies throughout the EEA. As for the issue of exclusivity, the EEA societies have accepted for decades that contracts between them should be based on non-exclusive arrangements.”
.
.Stumble It!
p2pnet - EC copyright plan good for Golden Oldies, July 15, 2008
EC statement -Commission prohibits practices which prevent European collecting societies offering choice to music authors and users, July 16, 2008
The Guardian - EU to introduce new music rights system despite lobby, July 15, 2008
Music Week - Collection societies protest EC decision, July 16, 2008
Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It’s really easy!Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile - http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details. Download here.
July 16th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
…
July 20th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
No matter what, the changes leave unchanged the major problems:
- blanket licenses for millions of songs that the licensee has no way of knowing which songs are really licensed. Ha no one noticed that the licenses include many songs from foreign countries, registered with reciprocating foreign “author organizations”. Ever hear of a club or radio statio checking the impossible, to see if their their license covers the songs xxxxxxxxx from Uruguay or xxxxxxxx from Japan or xxxxx from Albania? Then, why pay for these songs if they cannot be played?
- the non existent record keeping to insure proper money distribution.
- total control by music publidhers of song copyrights. the term “International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers” is a misnomer of the century joke.
- The payola problem. Big record companies push their latest songs and the performance money goes to the big record companies. Why a songwriter would belong to a so called composer organization where the big boys members get all the cash? They must be dumb. They must be influenced by the few songwriters that do make some money for their mostly lousy songs that need payola to be heard.
A totally new paradigm is required to fairly compensate the songwrites, artists and musicians that are the real creators of recorded music, without scamming the patrons. Just changing a few rules, but leaving the same system in place is not what is needed.