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A copyright holder that uses a collective management organization for some, but not all, of her rights is engaged in partial collective management. Again, a copyright holder’s exclusive rights in a work means that he or she alone is able to decide whether to authorize or prohibit any use covered by that copyright. In principle, this gives a copyright holder flexibility in deciding, if he chooses to use collective management at all, exactly which functions a collective management organization will perform on his behalf. In practice, however, some collective management organizations require a participating copyright holder to assign all of his rights in a copyrighted work to the organization. In these situations, the author will not be able to license others to use the copyrighted work, except through the collective management organization.

Collective management organizations may also provide social welfare benefits to their members in addition to their royalty payments, such as medical insurance and retirement packages. They may also use part of the royalties they collect to fund drama festivals, music competitions, or the production or export of national works.

Compulsory collective management

Compulsory collective management systems ensure that the benefits of collective management are actually realized. If a collective management organization does not have the rights to a significant number of works within its particular field, then it no longer serves the socially valuable purpose of being able to license a large repertoire in a single agreement.

As a result, some countries choose to make collective management for certain types of works mandatory. This often happens where a use serves an important public purpose or where works of that type are used primarily for non-commercial purposes. In such situations, royalties are usually gathered either through a tax on copying equipment, or through a predetermined fee to be paid by users (such as companies, libraries, or universities) to the collecting society. Those royalties are then divided among the copyright holders according to how frequently each work is used. Collective management organizations -- and compulsory collective management organizations in particular -- are sometimes criticized for the complexity and lack of transparency of the rules they employ for collecting and distributing royalties.

The areas in which compulsory collective management is most common are:

  • neighboring rights for public performance, broadcasting, and cable transmission of sound recordings.
  • public lending rights
  • reprographic reproduction rights for literary works.

The second and third of these contexts are especially important for libraries. Public lending rights were discussed at length in  Module 4 . As was described there, public lending rights are currently recognized in very few countries outside Europe, and they pose dangers to the central mission of libraries in developing countries. Collective management of such rights, particularly if the license fees are paid by the government, reduce those dangers, but it is probably best if public lending rights are not extended to developing countries at all.

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Source:  OpenStax, Copyright for librarians. OpenStax CNX. May 14, 2009 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col10698/1.2
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