The United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division (“DOJ”) appealed the judgment interpreting the consent decree between it and Broadcast Music, Inc. (“BMI”). The court ruled that the consent decree neither requires full-work licensing nor prohibits fractional licensing of BMI’s affiliates’ compositions. The dispute in this case is whether, under the consent decree, “fractional” interests BMI has acquired through its affiliates to a co-owned work are included in BMI’s repertory and may be included in the blanket license.
Comments closedCategory: Competition
The core difference between Options 2 and 3 is that Option 3 also covers online linear TV and radio-like transmissions (webcasting services) and online services ancillary to webcasting. One general challenge in assessing impacts of this option is the fact that webcasting market (in the sense of online-only, linear TV or radio-like services) is at a development stage and not yet fully formed.
Comments closedRussian Association of Internet Trade (AKIT) and “Public customer initiative” (OPI) have made research on internet trade. According to this research more than 25% of popular internet stores don’t comply with current Russian law. Approximately 1000 online store have been analyzed during the research.
Comments closedThis option would simplify the clearance of rights needed for cross-border online transmissions: broadcasters would only need to clear the rights for the country of origin while they would be able to offer their services in the entire EU. However, Option 2 entails a limited risk of disaggregation of repertoire currently managed by CMOs, which would have a negative effect on transaction costs (broadcasters would have to negotiate with individual rightholders instead of CMOs).
Comments closedMember States are required to enable the competent judicial authorities to order the infringer who knowingly, or with reasonable grounds to know, engaged in an infringing activity to pay the rightholder damages appropriate to the actual prejudice suffered by him as a result of the infringement. Where the infringer acted not knowingly, or without reasonable grounds to know, Member States have the possibility to enable the judicial authorities to order the recovery of profits or the payment of damages, which may be pre-established.
Comments closedOption 1 could facilitate the clearance of rights and reduce transaction costs for cross-border online transmissions only on the basis of voluntary agreements concluded between rightholders, CMOs and broadcasters. The effectiveness of such agreements would depend on the sectors’ willingness to license rights collectively (which may be limited in the case of AV works).
Comments closedRussian Federal Antitrust Service believes they can. Elena Zaeva, the main person in service’s department of communication and informational technologies, stated that the service has revealed the opportunity of search engines, namely Yandex and Google, to affect search results “manually”. But the service did not reveal violation of current Russian law, but it monitors the situation.
Comments closedUnder the baseline scenario, broadcasters would continue facing high transaction costs linked to licensing of rights for cross-border online transmissions, including for their own programmes. Existing voluntary initiatives aimed at promoting the aggregation of rights and the granting of multi-territorial licences could nevertheless contribute to facilitating the clearance of rights for musical works and phonograms used in in radio and TV broadcasts.
Comments closedThis appeal presents a single question: does BMI’s Consent Decree prohibit BMI from licensing a fractional interest in the public performance right to a musical work (commonly referred to as “fractional licensing”), when BMI does not control the entirety of the public performance right for that musical work? As demonstrated below, the answer to this question is no.
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