The Collective Licensing of Music for Online Uses – Role Model or Daunting Example for the Electronic Exploitation of Books (...

The Collective Licensing of Music for Online Uses – Role Model or Daunting Example for the Electronic Exploitation of Books and Other Educational Material?

The overarching aim of the presentation is to explore whether the electronic dissemination of books and other educational material can be facilitated if the rights involved are managed collectively. In a first step, the presentation provides an overview of how collective rights management does or does not work in the digital environment. Specifically, it looks at the area in which collective rights management is most pronounced, namely the rights of music composers and lyricists. The working patterns of collecting societies, both at the national and international level, will be analysed. Special attention will be paid to the traditional model of territorially delineated reciprocal representation. The second part then addresses two specific stumbling blocks in the digital environment: the CISAC antitrust decision adopted by the European Commission in 2008 and the now trend towards the establishment of repertoire-limited mini one-stop shops for mechanical online rights by the major music publishers. Finally, some observations will be made as to the comparability of online music and online books and other educational material. It is hoped that this will pave the way for an informed discussion as to whether a reinforced collective management of copyright is the way forward for online educational material.