Fragmentation of Rights for Online Use of Musical Works and Its Impact on Collective Management Organisations in Smaller EU Member States

Lucius Klobučník

In: ADAMOVÁ, Z. (ed.) Nové technológie, internet a duševné vlastníctvo 4. Trnava: Typi Universitatis Tyrnaviensis, spoločné pracovisko Trnavskej univerzity v Trnave a VEDY, vydavateľstva Slovenskej akadémie vied, 2020, pp. 143-167. ISBN 978-80-568-0329-5.

Summary: The first decades of the 21^st Century have introduced significant changes in the licensing landscape for online use of musical works. These changes, either legislative- or market-driven, were prompted by technological developments allowing consumers to enjoy access to large amount of musical works at a time and at a place of their choice. Traditional licensing mechanism, based on territorial monopolies of collective management organisations, proved unfit for online music service providers who had to obtain a licence from a collecting management organisation in every single EU Member State in order to provide their service EU-wide. Unfortunately, ongoing shifts in the online music licencing market have not sufficiently facilitated access to licences for online music service providers, but merely transformed the existing territorial fragmentation of rights into repertoire- or licensor-based fragmentation. This article examines the underlying legislative and market-related reasons for rights fragmentation in the online music licensing market. It gives an overview of characteristic features of multiterritorial licences for online use as well as technological and financial burden connected with administration and issuance of these licences. This article provides a closer look on the functioning of licensing hubs and other new licensing entities active in the multiterritorial online licensing market as well as legal questions surrounding these entities. Particular attention is devoted to collective management organisations from small EU Member States, which are usually not able to administer and issue multiterritorial online licences on their own but have to cooperate with these licensing entities. This article evaluates the role of small collective management organisations – such as the Slovak SOZA – in the online music licensing market, analyses the existing and possible cooperation with licensing hubs and other larger licensors and aims to predict the fragmented licensing market’s impact on repertoires they represent.

URL: http://ntidv.iuridica.truni.sk/archive/ntidv-4/NTIDV-4-Klobucnik-Lucius.pdf

Bibliographic Citation

KLOBUČNÍK, L. Fragmentácia práv k hudobným dielam v online prostredí a jej dopad na postavenie organizácií kolektívnej správy práv v menších štátoch EÚ. In: ADAMOVÁ, Z. (ed.) Nové technológie, internet a duševné vlastníctvo 4. Trnava: Typi Universitatis Tyrnaviensis, spoločné pracovisko Trnavskej univerzity v Trnave a VEDY, vydavateľstva Slovenskej akadémie vied, 2020, pp. 143-167. ISBN 978-80-568-0329-5.