EuroBuma's

"The European Commission can confirm that it has decided to open formal proceedings against CISAC (the “International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers”) and the individual national collecting societies in the EEA that are members of CISAC and has sent them a Statement of Objections (SO).

The Statement of Objections concerns certain parts of the CISAC model contract and its implementation at bilateral level by CISAC members in the EEA. The traditional forms of exploitation are outside the scope of the SO. As regards these new forms of copyright exploitation, the Commission considers that certain aspects of the agreements might infringe the EC Treaty’s prohibition of restrictive business practices (Article 81). These aspects are:

(i) the membership restrictions which oblige authors to transfer their rights only to their own national collecting society (whatever the subsequent exploitations of the rights)

(ii) the territorial restrictions, which oblige commercial users to obtain a license only from the domestic collecting society and limited to the domestic territory, and

(iii) the network effects of the agreements (the effect of the network of interlocking agreements between the collecting societies is that the membership and territorial restrictions multiply and guarantee to collecting societies an absolutely exclusive position on their domestic market: the historical de facto monopoly is strengthened and potential new entrants are prevented from entering the market for the management of copyright)." Lees het volledige persbericht hier.