Extended collective licensing - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Extended collective licensing (ECL) are collective copyright and related rights laws and licensing agreements. ECL agreements by law extend to rights owners who are not members of the collecting society agreeing the licence with a user. The first ECL laws and agreements were established in the Nordic countries in the 1960s for television and radio broadcasting

Broadcasting

Broadcasting is the distribution of audio and video content to a dispersed audience via any audio visual medium. Receiving parties may include the general public or a relatively large subset of thereof...

ECL laws and agreements

ECL is a form of collective rights management

Collective rights management

Collective rights management is the licensing of copyright and related rights by organizations acting on behalf of rights owners. Collective management organisations, such as collecting societies, typically represent groups of copyright and related rights owners, such as authors, composers,...

whereby ECL laws allow for freely negotiated copyright licensing contracts for the exclusive rights granted by copyright

Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...

. ECL laws are designed specifically for mass use, where negotiating alone will rarely allow a single right owner to fully financially benefit from their exclusive rights. Under ECL laws, collecting societies negotiate ECL agreements on behalf of their members, as well as non-members because ECL laws allow collecting societies to enter into ECL agreements on behalf of all rights owners. Once the collecting society and the user, such as a TV broadcaster, have negotiated an ECL agreement, it comes into force and covers only the types of copyrighted works for uses specified in the ECL licence.

ECL in Nordic countries

The first extended collective licensing (ECL) laws were established in Denmark

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

, Finland

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

, Iceland

Iceland

Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...

, Norway

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

and Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

(Nordic countries) in the 1960s. Committees in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, with participation from Iceland, reviewed copyright laws and proposed ECL for the use of literary and music works under copyright in radio and TV broadcasting. In subsequent years ECL has been extended to other copyrighted works and areas of use, including the reuse of broadcasts through re-broadcast, on demand services and online.

Authors, performing artists, publishers and producers are well organised in Nordic countries and collecting societies have a high membership. Collecting societies cooperate in many instances to offer joint licensing agreements. According to Daniel Gervais these are ideal conditions for collective rights management

Collective rights management

of copyright and related rights through ECL.

The Nordic model

While individual ECL laws and agreements in Nordic countries vary depending on type of copyrighted works and area of use, the Nordic model shares the following characteristics:

ECL laws assume that collecting societies represent copyright and related rights owners in a particular area and that collecting societies can conclude contracts, i.e. copyright licenses, on behalf of their members
subject to certain conditions, such as representing a substantial number of rights owners, collecting societies can under ECL law apply to represent all rights owners on a non-exclusive basis in a specific category of copyrighted works
ECL laws provide that a collecting society can through free negotiations conclude an ECL agreement with a user for certain uses
ECL laws prescribes that this ECL agreement applies to members of that collecting society, as well as non-members
ECL laws requires that collecting societies treat rights owners who are non-members in the same way they treat their members
ECL laws gives non-members the right to individual remuneration, i.e. royalty payment, by the collecting society
ECL laws typically gives non-members the right to exclude their works from ECL agreements so that a collecting society can not license their work under an ECL agreement (though not all ECL laws in Nordic countries provide an opt-out right)
ECL laws and ECL agreements ensure that the user who has entered an ECL agreement with the collecting society is not subject to copyright infringement
Copyright infringement
Copyright infringement is the unauthorized or prohibited use of works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.- "Piracy" :...

actions in relation to the use specified in the ECL agreement (this does not apply to works that are subject to an opt-out)

EU law

Article 2 of the Satellite and Cable Directive state that authors have the exclusive right to authorise the communication to the public of their work by satellite. According to the directive provides that such authorisation can only be given by agreement, and hence can not be subject to compulsory licensing. Article 3.2 of the directive outlines the following criteria for an ECL system, which is allowed under the directive. It states that:

"A Member State may provide that a collective agreement between a collecting society and a broadcasting organization concerning a given category of works may be extended to rightholders of the same category who are not represented by the collecting society, provided that:

the communication to the public by satellite simulcasts a terrestrial broadcast by the same broadcaster, and

the unrepresented rightholder shall, at any time, have the possibility of excluding the extension of the collective agreement to his works and of exercising his rights either individually or collectively."

Paragraph 18 of the InfoSoc Directive preamble states that “This Directive is without prejudice to the agreements in the Member States concerning the management of rights such as extended collective licensing”.

External links

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