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  • From: "Paul Harkins" <paul AT extrayardmusic.co.uk>
  • To: "Jonathan Mitchell" <website3 AT jonathanmitchell.info>, "Ed Griffith-Jones" <ed AT acrewoods.net>, "Creative Commons UK" <Cc-uk AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Cc: Florian Koempel <florian.koempel AT bmr.org>, Simon Frith <s.w.frith AT stir.ac.uk>, David Ferguson <david AT britishacademy.com>
  • Subject: Re: [Cc-uk] Collecting Societies
  • Date: Sun, 11 Sep 2005 21:29:25 +0100

As someone in the audience mentioned at the end of the debate in Glasgow, songwriters and publishers in the UK already have the option of asking another collection society to collect royalties throughout Europe. One of the reasons they probably choose not to is because the organizations are extremely bureaucratic and inefficient. GEMA in Germany, for example, only distribute twice a year compared to MCPS which does so on a monthly basis.
 
The solution to the current impasse therefore shouldn't be to attack the monopoly status of the collection societies in the UK but to work with them to ensure that those members who wish to license their work under CC are able to do so. This shouldn't be too difficult in theory as PRS & MCPS license very little non-commercial uses of music and would continue to collect & distribute royalties for commercial use. It may be more difficult in practice due to cumbersome computer systems and a general resistance to change.
 
It was frustrating to hear the tired old cliches that CC involves giving away your rights and never making any money. If the British Academy of Composers & Songwriters & British Music Rights take the time to engage with CC they would soon realise that it is not only relevant to academics & hobbyists and composers have more to gain than lose from a more flexible approach to copyright which allows fans to share music legally with friends and student film makers to use their music without being faced with unnecessary bills. 
 
The question of moral rights is obviously a crucial one and copyright owners need to have some control over their work but the blanket licenses used by PRS & MCPS at the moment result in the music of songwriters being used in contexts they find unsuitable. Massive Attack were rather annoyed a couple of years ago when the Conservatives used one of their songs at the launch of a policy initiative but couldn't do very much about it.
 
The idea of the BACAS to design a new license for fair music use which allows the free distribution of music without giving up copyright seems absolutely crazy when this is exactly what makes Creative Commons so appealing!
 
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, September 10, 2005 5:07 PM
Subject: Re: [Cc-uk] Collecting Societies

There was a panel discussion about this last week at the Musicworks
convention; http://www.musicworksuk.com/?node_id=1.3.2&id=83 . Andrés
Guadumuz blogged this at http://tinyurl.com/7omnq . The point was there made
that collecting society rules in UK effectively debar simultaneous use of CC
licences. One possible answer is an EU proposal to allow creators to
determine (a) which collecting society to use EU wide and (b) to stipulate
what it will collect: see FAQs at
http://europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/copyright/management/management_en
.htm . These state Othe individual membership contract will allow the
right-holder to define precisely the categories of rights administered O .
See also http://www.edri.org/issues/governance/eupolicy .

British Music Rights, (whose lawyer claimed at Musicworks that it took him,
er, two hours on the internet to find the terms of the CC licence) complain
"any solution that proposes to introduce competition between societies for
users by allowing "forum-shopping" would totally undermine [their
position]": http://www.bmr.org/html/submissions/submission111.htm . Indeed.

Meanwhile there's no movement. The BASC licence David Ferguson talked about
is still not publicly available even in draft- all we saw was its logo
(which was misspelled). It doesn't however seem that it will be compatible
with current collecting society requirements either.


Jonathan
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> From: Ed Griffith-Jones <ed AT acrewoods.net>
> Date: Sat, 10 Sep 2005 13:56:28 +0100
> To: Cc-uk AT lists.ibiblio.org
> Subject: [Cc-uk] Collecting Societies
>
> Hello all,
>
> I was just wondering is anyone has spoken to the UK Collecting Societies about
> Creative Commons recently?
>
> What is their current stance on CC?
>
> Ed
> Remix Reading / Brighton / FC-UK
>
> Hi Tim,
>
> I have already had a meeting with ACLS and they were rather positive in
> relation to both the commercial and non-commercial versions of the licence.
> The message we are trying to pass is pretty much the one that Ashlyn from
> Fading Ways was suggesting in a previous posting:
>
>> While he is correct in pointing
>> out that CC is not a copyright alternative, CC licenses clearly are
>> NEEDED in today's marketplace for artists that believe home-taping and
>> P2P file sharing is beneficial to our work and essential to our
>> internet and street-team marketing. It is ludicrous to accept the
>> present music b usiness industry model, which is incredibly stumped and
>> outdated by the information highway, without looking at other ways to
>> legally improve our business practices.
>
>
> I am planning meetings with the rest of the UK collecting societies within
> March/April, so I will keep you posted on that. Just wanted the licences to be
> finalised and on the website before proceeding to any further discussions with
> collecting societies.
>
> Having said that I would like to thank you all for the feedback you keep
> providing on the licences. Also, to the CC-Scotland team: sorry for the CC-UK
> mistake on the licences, it keeps popping up the whole time in a rather
> embarassing way!!!
>
> Best,
> pRo
>
>
> --
> Prodromos Tsiavos
> Oxford University Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy
> Manor Road, Oxford http://pcmlp.socleg.ox.ac.uk
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Cc-uk mailing list
> Cc-uk AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-uk
>

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