Collective Management Of Copyright And Its Legislative Study

The author has the copyright in his / her work. In the course of the realizing the rights, some of the rights cannot be realized by the authors themselves. For instance, the authors of the music works own their rights of public performance, - the rights to grant others to present publicly the works through record, radio, broadcasting, television, etc., including the performance on a stage, broadcasting in a public entertainment place and using the works on the Internet. But in practice, it is hard for an author to keep the control of the licensing when his / her works have been published, and it is impossible for him / her to negociating with the users and getting the compensation. In the other respect, many users usually need a lot of works. From the view of them, it is hard for them to look for all the authors for the granted licensing and compensation sent to for them. In most cases, if the works all handled by the authers themselves, the copyright will be meaningless for the authors.In practice, to deal these issues, the best way should be the collective administration. The porpose of establishing of the collecting society is that, to grant the rights collectivelly through the society, to collect the remuneration and distribute it to the right holders. This kind of society is not only in creasing effectivelly the possibilities of the authors or the right holders, but also facilitate the granting the rights to the users, and these can encourge the distribution of the works.At the beginning, most collecting societies were originated from the music society whcih only deal with the rights of public performance. The operation of this kind of society was based on a commission contract, which was signed between the right holders and the society. According to the contract, the society should collect the compensation and then to distribute it to its members. The leagal relationship in this case was base on a contract.For the adoption of a regulation for the Chinese collecting societies, the auther of this poper analyses the situation in China first: it is not an easy thing in setting such a society. The reasons are: (1) lacking the consciousness of coyright among the public; (2) the users were used to use the works freely, or they thought that an intellectual work was the same with an ordinary product, once the money was paied, then the work could be used free of charge; (3) most authors do not know how to protect their copyright. Bused on this analysis, the auther of this poper make a suggestion the collecting societies in China should adopt:Membership based on a commission contract and the statutory licensing; registration as a private group and supported by the governmeat, administration as a modern company; a fair competition policy and strenthen the supervision by the government, Facing the issues raised by the new technology, for instauce, the use of published works on the Internet, the author of this paper believes, it should not adopt the principle of "statutory permission". The reasons are if adoptting the principle, the collecting societies would be hard to enforce their rights. For the plenty of works used by the ISP, it would be hard for the collecting societies to grant, supervise and administer their rights. What they could do is only waiting for the money coming from those ISP of conscience. This would weaken the function of the collecting societies and depart from setting up such societies, and also run counter to the international usual practice.For the supervision and administration of the collecting societies, the author of this paper suggests that a mediation committee should be set up in the copyright collective administration system. For drafting the Regulation of the Copyright Collective Administration, the author of this paper gave a draf-regulation. The final remark of this paper is that: the collecting societies are the best way to solve the problems in realizing the copyright in the digital environment.