to opt out of collective management on a per-work basis) the final list of amendments adopted by parliament includes an amendment that - if included in the final directive - would allow members of collective management organisations 'to grant licences for non-commercial uses'.
AM 54: Rightholders shall have the right to grant licences for the non-commercial uses of the rights, categories of rights or types of works and other subject matter of their choice. Collective management organisations shall inform their members of this right and of the conditions attaching thereto.
While open to interpretation, the above language would mean that collecting societies across would need to allow their members to license some of their works under CC licenses that allow for non commercial use of the licensed work (the 3 NC licenses). This would effectively expand the ability to use these licenses from member of BUMA, KODA, STIM and SACEM to members of all collective management organisations in Europe.
Parliament has issued its report containing the above amendment at the beginning of summer. The next step in the legislative process are the so called trialogue negotiations between Parliament, the Council (representing the 28 member states) and the Commission. These negotiations are intended to arrive at a final text, based on the original commission proposal, the amendments contained in the report of the Parliament and the text adopted by the Council (called COREPER text). The trialogue negotiations are closed door negotiations between representatives from these three organisations and are relatively difficult to influence. In general the rule during this stage is that it is only possible to express support for one of the three versions of the text (Commission, EP, COREPER).
In the light of the above Communia has drafted a short document (see attachments) that underlines the importance of the above amendment (as well as a number of other amendments aimed at ensuring public access to the repertoire information held by the collective management organisations). This document has been send to the permanent representative of the member states in brussels as well as the relevant members of parliament and the commission officials involved in these discussions.
At this stage the most important stakeholder to influence are the member states. This can be done through the permanent representatives in brussels (see above) but must also been done through the officials in charge of this dossier in the capitals of the member states (generally this will be people in the Ministries of Justice, in some cases Ministry of Culture).
Given this I would like to ask you to consider if you are willing to get in touch with the relevant experts in your country and share with them the above recommendation (or recommendations if you are also thinking that publicly available repertoire information is a good thing). This can be done in a number of ways, by meeting with the officials or by figuring out who they are and sending them the attached document with an explanation why you support this, or by modifying the document to make it look like it is a document issued by your organisation and then sending it (this is why I am including a word version).
Obviously I would be very nice if most of the affiliates on this list would help with this. The passing of the directive presents a unique opportunity to address the incompatibility between CC and collective management organisations. Having support from a large number of affiliates in this improves our chances. If you have any questions related to the above or need some help please feel free to get back to me.
all the best from Amsterdam,
Paul