A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educational, or musical form. Copyright is intended to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itself. A copyright is subject to limitations based on public interest considerations, such as the fair use doctrine in the United States.
A private copying levy is a government-mandated scheme in which a special tax or levy is charged on purchases of recordable media. Such taxes are in place in various countries and the income is typically allocated to the developers of "content".
Copyrights can either be licensed or assigned by the owner of the copyright. A copyright collective is a non-governmental body created by copyright law or private agreement which licenses copyrighted works on behalf of the authors and engages in collective rights management. Copyright societies track all the events and venues where copyrighted works are used and ensure that the copyright holders listed with the society are remunerated for such usage. The copyright society publishes its own tariff scheme on its websites and collects a nominal administrative fee on every transaction.
A performance rights organisation (PRO), also known as a performing rights society, provides intermediary functions, particularly collection of royalties, between copyright holders and parties who wish to use copyrighted works publicly in locations such as shopping and dining venues. Legal consumer purchase of works, such as buying CDs from a music store, confer private performance rights. PROs usually only collect royalties when use of a work is incidental to an organisation's purpose. Royalties for works essential to an organisation's purpose, such as theaters and radio, are usually negotiated directly with the rights holder. The interest of the organisations varies: many have the sole focus of musical works, while others may also encompass works and authors for audiovisual, drama, literature, or the visual arts.
A royalty payment is a payment made by one party to another that owns a particular asset, for the right to ongoing use of that asset. Royalties are typically agreed upon as a percentage of gross or net revenues derived from the use of an asset or a fixed price per unit sold of an item of such, but there are also other modes and metrics of compensation. A royalty interest is the right to collect a stream of future royalty payments.
APRA AMCOS consists of Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) and Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society (AMCOS), both copyright management organisations or copyright collectives which jointly represent over 100,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers in Australia and New Zealand. The two organisations work together to license public performances and administer performance, communication and reproduction rights on behalf of their members, who are creators of musical works, aiming to ensure fair payments to members and to defend their rights under the Australian Copyright Act (1968).
Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL) is a British music copyright collective. It is a private limited company that is registered in the UK. PPL was founded by Decca Records and EMI and incorporated on 12 May 1934, and undertakes collective rights management of sound recordings on behalf of its record-company members, and distributes the fees collected to both its record company (rights holder) members and performer members. As of 2019, PPL collected royalties for over 110,000 performers and recording rightsholders.
The Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) is a British organisation that works to ensure that writers are fairly compensated for any of their works that are copied, broadcast or recorded. It has operated in the United Kingdom since 1977. From that year to 2016, the ALCS distributed over £450 million to authors, and at the end of 2016 had in excess of 90,000 members.
SoundExchange is an American non-profit collective rights management organization founded in 2003. It is the sole organization designated by the U.S. Congress to collect and distribute digital performance royalties for sound recordings. It pays featured and non-featured artists and master rights owners for the non-interactive use of sound recordings under the statutory licenses set forth in 17 U.S.C. § 112 and 17 U.S.C. § 114.
The Irish Music Rights Organisation (IMRO) is a national organisation that administers the performing right in copyright music in Ireland on behalf of its members and on behalf of the songwriters, composers and music publishers of the international overseas societies that are affiliated to it. At present IMRO has approximately 11,000 songwriter, composer and music publisher members.
Newspaper Licensing Ireland Ltd (NLI) is an Irish not for profit company which provides licenses to organisations to copy and distribute copyrighted material from print sources, such as from newspapers and magazines. The company, which was established in 2002, was set up by the National Newspapers of Ireland group, later renamed "NewsBrands Ireland". In 2012 and 2013, Newspaper Licensing Ireland gained attention, and posted a "clarifying statement", relating to its reported position on charging organisations to hyperlink to newspaper articles.
Publishers' Licensing Services (PLS), formerly The Publishers Licensing Society, is a not-for-profit organisation that represents many book, magazine and journal publishers based in the United Kingdom. PLS works to ensure that publishers are fairly compensated for any copying of their works through the collective licensing scheme, among other rights management services, which have become an increasing important secondary revenue stream for publishers. Its primary goal is to oversee collective licensing in the UK for book, journal, magazine and website copying. The society was established in 1981. Together with the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society, PLS own and direct the Copyright Licensing Agency. They also work in partnership with NLA media access.
A copyright agency is a not-for-profit organisation which sets royalty rates, administers copyright registration databases, and issues interpretations of copyright statutes. Copyright is a kind of intellectual property concept and legislation which protects the original expression of ideas. Creators can use it to manage how their content is reproduced.
Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) is a U.S. company based in Danvers, Massachusetts,, that provides collective copyright licensing services for corporate and academic users of copyrighted materials. CCC procures agreements with rightsholders, primarily academic publishers, and then acts as their agent in arranging collective licensing for institutions and one-time licensing for document delivery services, coursepacks, and other access and uses of texts.
Collective rights management is the licensing of copyright and related rights by organisations acting on behalf of rights owners. Collective management organisations (CMOs), sometimes also referred to as collecting societies, typically represent groups of copyright and related rights owners, i.e; authors, performers, publishers, phonogram producers, film producers and other rights holders At the least, rights holders authorize collective rights management organizations to monitor the use of their works, negotiate licenses with prospective users, document correct right management data and information, collect remuneration for use of copyrighted works, ensuring a fair distribution of such remuneration amongst rightsholders. WMOs also act on legal mandates. Governmental supervision varies across jurisdictions.
Collection administration of copyrights describes the use in Canadian law of collective societies to manage licenses for copyrighted material belonging to more than one copyright owner. These collective societies are responsible for granting permission to use the works they manage and setting out what conditions users of their works must follow. Examples of collective societies in Canada include: Christian Video Licensing International and the Canadian Broadcasters Rights Agency
SAMRO, the Southern African Music Rights Organisation, is a copyright asset management society. It was established by the South African Copyright Act, and aims to protect the intellectual property of music creators by licensing music users, collecting licence fees and distributing royalties to music creators. SAMRO represents more than 15,000 Southern African music composers, lyricists/authors and music publishers. The organisation administers performing rights.
The Jamaica Association of Composers, Authors and Publishers (JACAP) is a Jamaican not-for-profit membership collective management organization which was established in 1998. JACAP administers the public performance and, if assigned also, the mechanical (reproductive) rights and synchronization rights of lyricists (authors), music composers and music publishers in Jamaica. JACAP is a member of the umbrella organisation for copyright societies CISAC - The International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers. JACAP is also a founding member of The Association of Caribbean Copyright Societies (ACCS).
Indian Reprographic Rights Organisation (IRRO) is a copyright society established under Section 33 of the Copyright Act, 1957. Its main objective is to ensure that the copyrights of authors are protected and that copyright owners are respected and rewarded when their original works are used and reproduced. The guidelines of regulating copyrights by IRRO are curated in a fair way that rewards the authors, creators, and publishers and allows easy reproduction of their works and publications. The organization deploys the highest ethical standards when it comes to dealing with the rights of authors, collecting and distributing remunerations, and the bonafide funds they hold.
