FIM

International Federation of Musicians

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Intellectual property

Finland | Fight over Internet music rights goes to Court

22.05.2014 Updated on 14.05.2018 Intellectual property, Piracy

Ahti Vänttinen

19 May 2014 — Fight Over Internet Music Rights goes to Market Court — Two sons of late Albert Järvinen, best known as gui­tarist for the Finnish rock’n’roll band Hurriganes, have tak­en Universal Music Finland to the Market Court of Helsinki over inter­net music rights. The sub­poe­na states that the orig­i­nal record con­tract from the ear­ly 1970’s does not allow for Universal to offer the music on Internet music ser­vices with­out sep­a­rate autho­ri­sa­tion. Universal is required to take out the first Hurriganes albums from the inter­net ser­vices, pend­ing a fine of 100 000 euros.

Universal, like all record com­pa­nies, main­tains that as the own­er of the mas­ter record­ings it has the right to dis­trib­ute music through var­i­ous chan­nels. […]
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The Swedish Musicians’ Union sues Warner, Naxos and MNW

22.05.2014 Updated on 11.03.2021 Intellectual property, Piracy

Jan Granvik

6 May 2014 — The Swedish Musicians’ Union sues record com­pa­nies for music on Spotify

The Swedish Musician’s Union (SMF), as rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a num­ber of its mem­bers, has sued the record com­pa­nies Warner, MNW and Naxos. The aim is to take to court the ques­tion of whether the record com­pa­nies have the right to put record­ings with the artists on Spotify and oth­er dig­i­tal platforms.

“The record com­pa­nies have used the con­di­tions spec­i­fied in old agree­ments that were made before the “dig­i­tal era”, and they con­sid­er these to be applic­a­ble even when dis­trib­ut­ing via stream­ing ser­vices. We believe this to be ille­gal. […]
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26th Session of WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR)

27.12.2013 Updated on 26.11.2019 Intellectual property

Chaired by Peru, the SCCR at its 26th ses­sion addressed the fol­low­ing issues:
 — draft treaty on the pro­tec­tion of broad­cast­ing orga­ni­za­tions against pira­cy of their sig­nals
 — lim­i­ta­tions and excep­tions for libraries and archiv­ing services.

SCCR has been con­cerned with pro­tect­ing broad­cast­ing orga­ni­za­tions for over 15 years. In 2007, giv­en the lack of con­sen­sus over the oppor­tu­ni­ty to include web­cast­ing with­in the pro­tec­tive scope, the WIPO General Assembly had rede­fined the SCCR man­date, lim­it­ing it to “tra­di­tion­al” broad­cast­ing (i.e. exclud­ing web­cast­ing) and a signal-​based approach (so as to pre­vent trans­mit­ted con­tents gen­er­at­ing rights for broad­cast­ers, either direct­ly or indi­rect­ly). Despite this, options debat­ed still con­tin­ue today to include ref­er­ences to web­cast­ing and post-​fixation rights, which is inco­her­ent with the committee’s man­date. […]
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Online music: music performers denounce industry practices

04.11.2013 Updated on 27.08.2015 Intellectual property

Per M Herrey - SMF lawyer

Rumbling dis­con­tent is on the rise with pro­fes­sion­al musi­cians whose record­ings are exploit­ed online. Swedish union SMF is prepar­ing legal action. [Photograph: Per M Herrey — SMF lawyer]

Is the Spotify stream­ing ser­vice real­ly the busi­ness mod­el for the future? While the num­ber of the Swedish company’s sub­scribers is grow­ing at a sus­tained pace, along with the amount of its income, musi­cians are more than ever exclud­ed from this market.

Even if, for part of the pub­lic, “artist” is syn­ony­mous with glit­ter and press peo­ple, the real­i­ty is quite dif­fer­ent for the immense major­i­ty of pro­fes­sion­al musi­cians who are strug­gling to live from their trade. […]
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Beijing Treaty | Latin American musicians’ unions come out in favour of swift ratification

02.08.2013 Updated on 07.07.2020 Gender equality, Intellectual property, Labour rights, Latin America, Social dialogue

Musicians’ unions from 10 Latin American coun­tries met in Montevideo (Uruguay) from the 9 to 11 July 2013 for a region­al con­fer­ence on capac­i­ty build­ing, intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights and gen­der equal­i­ty, with­in the frame­work of a region­al project financed by LO-​TCO (Sweden).

The 18 del­e­gates attend­ing high­light­ed the dif­fi­cul­ties encoun­tered by pro­fes­sion­al musi­cians in Latin America, in par­tic­u­lar the absence of any real rights as work­ers when they have to exer­cise their activ­i­ty as self-​employed musi­cians. They deplored nation­al leg­is­la­tions which pro­vid­ed insuf­fi­cient pro­tec­tion for intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty (treaties not ful­ly or unsat­is­fac­to­ri­ly trans­posed, no pri­vate copy­ing excep­tion) as well as an unfair shar­ing of rev­enues from exploita­tion of their record­ings on Internet. […]
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United Kingdom | Musicians’ union’s 120th anniversary

02.08.2013 Updated on 26.07.2016 Europe, Federation's life, Intellectual property

During its bien­ni­al con­fer­ence on the 23 and 24 July 2013, the British Musicians’ Union (BMU) cel­e­brat­ed its 120th anniver­sary in Manchester, where it was cre­at­ed in 1893. This par­tic­u­lar­ly bril­liant event was an oppor­tu­ni­ty, for Europe’s largest musi­cians’ union with over 30,000 mem­bers, to denounce once more the British government’s rad­i­cal dis­en­gage­ment from all its mis­sions of a cul­tur­al char­ac­ter and its dev­as­tat­ing effects on musi­cal life in the coun­try. This his­toric cul­tur­al regres­sion is astute­ly described on the http://​www​.lost​-arts​.org website.

Another par­tic­u­lar­ly iniq­ui­tous ini­tia­tive from the Cameron admin­is­tra­tion is cur­rent­ly being active­ly opposed by the BMU and its part­ner BASCA (British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors): in February 2013, the British gov­ern­ment announced the set­ting up in the UK of an excep­tion for pri­vate copy­ing with­out com­pen­sa­tion for righthold­ers, con­trary to almost all nation­al instru­ments imple­ment­ed in the rest of the European Union and in clear-​cut con­tra­ven­tion of arti­cle 5 – 2b of Directive 2001/​29 CE which estab­lish­es the prin­ci­ple of equi­table com­pen­sa­tion for righthold­ers. […]
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Collective management in Europe – FIM defends the place of performers

25.06.2013 Updated on 16.09.2016 Collective management, Europe, Intellectual property

While a pro­posed direc­tive on col­lec­tive man­age­ment of copy­right is being stud­ied by European Union bod­ies, FIM remains reserved with regards to cer­tain pro­pos­als drawn up by the European Commission to reg­u­late the admin­is­tra­tion of col­lect­ing societies.

FIM is pleased with cer­tain rec­om­men­da­tions made by the rap­por­teur of the text, Mrs Marielle Gallo. The report right­ly rec­om­mends that pro­duc­ers, as well as com­mer­cial users, should be bound to pro­vide col­lect­ing soci­eties with the data they have that are essen­tial for smooth copy­right administration.

FIM is, how­ev­er, con­cerned that per­form­ers’ spe­cif­ic require­ments have not yet been suf­fi­cient­ly tak­en into account, in par­tic­u­lar when it comes to arti­cle 3b (defin­ing the righthold­er). […]
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France | Apple vs. Copie France: Apple sanctioned

23.06.2013 Updated on 15.10.2016 Intellectual property

copie-privee

On Monday 1 June, Apple was sen­tenced by the Paris District Court to make an inter­im pay­ment of €5M to Copie France, the organ­i­sa­tion which, in France, receives the levy for pri­vate copy (RCP) on behalf of col­lect­ing soci­eties. The com­mit­tee respon­si­ble for set­ting scales had decid­ed on the 12 January 2011 to sub­ject touch­pads to pay­ment of RCP in accor­dance with a pro­vi­sion­al scale up to the 31 December 2011 (deci­sion #13).

Apple had applied this levy to the iPad but had not paid it on to Copie France. The court ruled that the committee’s deci­sion #13 was enforce­able (up until such time as it might pos­si­bly be quashed by the Conseil d’État [State Council]) and val­i­dat­ed the amount receiv­able by Copie France from Apple. […]
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