Whe people need to know what their rights are, they should go to the law books at the library or the net and not have to do a wild search among unavailable contracts, which have no force in law except for the signing parties anyway.

I beleive that copying for private personal and non commercial use of any creator’s work should be legal for three simple reasons:
1. it is good for culture and education
2. any law to the contrary is impossible to enforce
3. creator works are saved for future generations
4. democracy: the majority wants to do it and the will of the majority must be respected over the interets of the few.

I also beleive that any work which is not currently available or not found after a reasonable search should be allowed to be published for commercial gain without a license from the copyright owner if said owner cannot be reasonably found and royalties are deposited on a government controlled account.

These ideas fit in laws, not contracts.

Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com

Then, who protects or represent the authors for their protection against the publishers?

Publishers and the authors are on two different side in interest, like workers and employers, and customers and stores.

Actually this organization ARTISJUS seems to be a traditional collective that starts with the words composer and ends up working for the publishers that keep all the profits and hand down the composers a few pennies. This conclusion is inevitable because the organization represents also the authr’s frequent nemesis, the publishers.

The giveaway: author-publisher collectives never say how much each author and each publisher was paid. It is allways a “confidential”, a secret. Not even the author members know.

Perhaps someone from Hungary can tell us how much of the music economic pie actually is for each author member of ARTISJUS.

Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com