Extended Collective Licensing for the Use of Out-of-Commerce Works in Europe: A Matter of Legitimacy Vis-à-Vis Rights Holders

Abstract

Extended Collective Licensing (ECL) schemes have been put forward in Europe as one of the solutions for the licensing of out-of-commerce works by cultural heritage institutions. ECL schemes extend the application of freely negotiated copyright licensing agreements between a user and a collective management organisation (CMO) to the works of non-members of the organisation. Not every CMO is suitable to license works under ECL provisions, however. In particular, the legitimacy of any agreement crucially relies on the ''representativeness'' of the CMO. This article focuses on the notion of representativeness of CMOs. On the basis of current European and national legislation, we argue that the representative character of a CMO encompasses three essential elements to be considered from the perspective of the rights owners: (1) the CMO must have a broad membership among the potential rights owners in the market it serves; (2) it must have a proper mandate from the rights owners in terms of category of works and rights covered; and (3) it must take appropriate measures to reach and inform (non-)members about the exercise of rights. ECL schemes can only be sufficiently legitimate to presume tacit approval by non-members if this assessment of the three criteria is carried out carefully.

Meneroka Isu Orphan Works dari Sudut Pandang Undang-undang Hak Cipta Malaysia

“…Sistem pengurusan kolektif tradisional juga dijalankan secara sukarela. Oleh itu, OPK hanya berhak bertindak bagi pemilik hak cipta yang secara sukarela memilih untuk menjadi ahli organisasi dan seterusnya memberikan mandat mereka kepada OPK (Guibault & Schroff, 2018). Keadaan di atas tidak sama dalam konteks ECL apabila OPK diberikan kuasa oleh undang-undang untuk mengeluarkan lesen bukan sahaja untuk ahli mereka (yang secara sukarela memilih) tetapi juga ahli organisasi yang tidak diwakili, melainkan mereka sendiri memilih untuk menarik diri daripada skim ECL ini (Tryggvadóttir, 2018).…”

Public Good Theory: A Theoretical Justification for Permissive License to Use and Re-Use Orphan Works

“…These activities require potential users to obtain permission to use the work (through licences) from the copyright holder. They must identify and contact the copyright holder to negotiate the terms of use and payment of royalty (Guibault & Schroff, 2018). With this aspect of "permission" in mind, potential users of the orphan works may face the risk of copyright infringement if they proceed to use the works without obtaining the required authorisation from the copyright holder.…”

Liberating Orphan Works from The Copyright Orphanage: The Malaysian Perspective

“…The activities that the CMO is given the mandate to represent include the negotiations of the licence rate and royalties, as well as the collection and distribution of the said proceeds among the copyright holders (Dryden, 2017). The traditional collective management system is also run on voluntary or opt-in basis i.e the CMO would only be entitled to act for the copyright holders that have opted-in to become the member of the organisations and further assigned their rights to the CMO (Guibault and Schroff, 2018).…”