Study On Balance Of Interests In Copyright Collective Management

In order to cut the consultation costs between individual copyright owners and copyright users, and to facilitate the collection and distribution of copyright royalties, the copyright collective management organization play an important role as a broker in the arena of copyright transaction. On March 1, 2005, the State Council promulgated and implemented the Copyright Collective Management Regulations, which is a great step in the collective management of copyright. This regulation selects relative monopolistic mode, establishing only one management organization for each kind of work nationwide. Moreover, according to the regulation, the copyright collective management organization may acquire"monopoly authorization"by contracts. In other words, the authors are not allowed to exercise their copyrights after they signed the contract of authorization with the copyright management organization. This would probably lead to abusive behaviors from the part of the copyright management organization. So far, there is little research on the copyright collective management in China.So far, the vast majority research in China focus on the necessity of establishing the copyright collective management organizations and which model is more suitable for China. These problems are mostly solved by the regulations. However this is little research on the State Council's regulations. The system of copyright collective management in China is far from perfect, and Music Copyright Society, which is the only experienced copyright management organization in china, has shown problem of unbalance interests. Such problems could hardly be corrected under the current monopolistic mode. It is the intention of this thesis to examine the balance of interests under the current collective management regime. Firstly, the thesis analyzes the roots of copyright collective management and alternative modes. Secondly, the thesis demonstrates the necessity of balancing of the interests under current regime of collective management of copyright in China. Finally, the thesis examines the membership, rate of fee, licensing form, distribution of royalty under the collective management system, and put forward several proposals. Firstly, the qualification of"copyright owner"should be the only requirement of the member for a collective management organization. Secondly, the rate of fee should be raised by"group to group"negotiation. Thirdly, the law should make available alternative licensingmethods in addition to the program-by-program licensing contract and blanket licensing contract. Fourthly, small businesses that satisfy certain condition may be exempted from paying royalties or only pay a symbolic sum. The law should seek to balance the interest of copyright owners and that of users, the industry and the public in order to prevent the copyright collective management organizations from exploiting.