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European IP Bulletin, Issue 13, June - Copyright
Copyright
The European Commission has warned sixteen national organisations that collect royalties on behalf of music authors that their so-called Santiago Agreement, which aims at simplifying the licensing of music to be used online by allowing them to grant “one-stop shop” copyright licences, may be in breach of European Union competition rules.
Following a need expressed by online content providers to get a worldwide license from one collecting society, some of the major collecting societies including those of UK (PRS), France (SACEM), Germany (GEMA), the Netherlands (BUMA), Switzerland (SUISA) and most other societies of the European Economic Area, have signed the so-called Santiago Agreement in October 2000. The aim of the Agreement was to give an answer to the digital challenge in the field of licensing and distribution by allowing national organisations that collect royalties to grant “one-stop shop” copyright licenses.
The Agreement provides that licenses can be granted to content providers who are responsible for deciding or approving the content of the database, the licensor being the society of the country where they have their actual and economic location. Once a license has been granted by a society, content providers no longer need to obtain another authorisation from another society. The license granted is a worldwide license, which provides content providers with the legal certainty they need to carry out their activity.
The Commission, however, considers that the territorial exclusivity afforded by the Santiago Agreement to each of the participating societies is not justified by technical reasons and is irreconcilable with the world-wide reach of the Internet. Whereas the European Commission said it strongly supports the “one-stop shop” copyright licences and acknowledges the need to ensure adequate copyright protection and enforcement, it also believes that developments in online-related activities should be accompanied by an increasing freedom of choice by consumers and commercial users throughout Europe as regards their service providers. Indeed, in its press release, the European Commission said that the Santiago Agreement would result in a “lock up of national territories, transposing into the Internet the national monopolies the societies have traditionally held in the offline world”.
The collecting societies now have two and a half months and a half to reply to the Commission’s objections. They will also have the possibility to request a hearing where they will be able to submit their arguments directly to the representatives of their national competition authorities.
The Irish Government has brought emergency legislation before the Irish Parliament to prevent the possibility of the Irish National Library being sued for copyright infringement in the course of displaying manuscripts of James Joyce’s work.
James Joyce set his odyssey in a day chronicle of the comings and goings of Leopold Bloom, Ulysses, on 16 June 1904. 2004 marks the centenary of that day, and as part of the events to celebrate this date, the Irish National Library planned an exhibition of more than 500 sheets written by Joyce, including drafts of eight episodes of Ulysses and proofs of Finnegans Wake. However, the Joyce estate, which holds copyright in Joyce’s writings until 2011, warned the library that it could be infringing Joyce’s copyright. The warning follows threats by the estate to the national television operator and the Government that the estate would sue for any infringement of its copyright that took place during the centennial celebrations.
Faced with this threat of legal action, the Government has brought the Copyright and Related Rights (Amendment) Bill 2004 before the Irish Parliament. The Bill alters the Irish Copyright Act 2000 in a way that, according to an explanatory memorandum to the legislation, “will remove any doubt as to the right of any person to place literary or artistic works protected by copyright or copies thereof on public exhibition without committing a breach of copyright”.
Such an amendment should not be necessary in the UK since it is made clear in s.19(3) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 that showing a work in public is only infringement with regard to copyright in a sound recording, film or broadcast. This implicitly discounts the possibility that showing a manuscript in public would be classed as an infringement of copyright in the underlying literary work.
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