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Category: Competition

USA DOJ ASCAP and BMI ruling – imperfections of fractional licencing

A comparison between the licensing of public performance rights and the licensing of synchronization rights further illustrates the problem faced by music users who rely on PRO licenses. Producers of movies or television programming have traditionally entered separate synchronization licenses with each owner of a fractional interest in a song the producer seeks to include in his or her television show or movie, generally on a song-by-song basis.

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USA DOJ ASCAP and BMI ruling – fractional licencing and public interest

If PROs offer fractional licenses, a music user, before performing any multi-owner work in a PRO’s repertory, would need a license to the fractional interests held by each of the work’s co-owners. A full-work license from a PRO, on the other hand, would provide infringement protection to a music user seeking to perform any work in the repertory of the PRO.

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Commission finds Spain’s support for private TV broadcasters in breach of EU rules

The European Commission has found that a Spanish scheme compensating terrestrial private broadcasters for carrying out parallel broadcasting during the digitisation of the terrestrial television signal is in breach of EU state aid rules. As no aid has been granted yet, no recovery will be required.

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Right holders have created a competitor of Russian authors society

Right holders, who are not happy with RAO have decided and created their own collecting society. As the basis for new collecting society has been taken already incorporated legal entity in a form of non-profit partnership “Russian society of authors and other right holders on collective management of their rights ROAP”. New legal entity is called Russian Authors Union (ROAS).

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RAO claims unknown persons try to organise a “raider seizure”

1st of August, 2016 in Russian Gazette under advertisement rules has been published a call to RAO’s members to organise extraordinary conference, i.e. meeting. For these purposes RAO members were proposed to complete and file some “anonymous ballot paper”. Agenda was simple: to fire Sergey Fedotov, CEO of RAO, his first deputy Vera Fedotova, his mother, dissolution of authors council and dissolution of audit commission.

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The reasons in USA DOJ closing statement on collective management rules review for ASCAP and BMI

Many musical works have multiple authors. Under the copyright law, joint authors of a single work are treated as tenants-in-common, so “[e]ach co-owner may thus grant a nonexclusive license to use the entire work without the consent of other co-owners, provided that the licensor accounts for and pays over to his or her co-owners their pro-rata shares of the proceeds.” Copyright holders may, however, depart from the default rules under the Copyright Act.

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USA DOJ closing statement on collective management rules review for ASCAP and BMI – main point

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) and Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) are “performing rights organizations” (PROs). PROs provide licenses to users such as bar owners, television and radio stations, and internet music distributors that allow them to publicly perform the musical works of the PROs’ thousands of songwriter and music publisher members.

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Russian authors society intends to implement special player for public performance in different venues

RAO is ready to create special technical platform in order to automatically track using of musical works in public places (restaurants, outlets and other different venues) and on television channels and radio stations. The purpose is to allow authors and right holder to be able to check how often their music is performed and how much they should receive.

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Original ideas to reform collective rights management in Russia

Investigators do their job. They interrogate employees of RAO. And Sergey Fedotov tries to appeal his arrest. Other stake holders have to present their proposals concerning new model of collective rights management. They have term till middle of August. First vice-premier Igor Shuvalov entrust Russian ministry of economic development to create new model of collective rights management. “We will try to involve all stakeholders and providers of content, and authors and telecommunication companies and all of them.” – said Oleg Fomichev, deputy of Russian minister of economic development.

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