Over the past three decades, collective management organizations (CMOs) have become the nerve centres of copyright licensing in virtually every country. Their expertise and knowledge of copyright law and management have proven essential to making copyright work in the digital age. But they have also been at the centre of debates about their effectiveness, transparency and governance. This book provides an in-depth analysis of the various operational CMO models, their rights and obligations vis-à-vis authors, other right-holders and users, the acquisition of the legal authority to license and (most importantly) the rights to license digital uses of protected material, and the creation (or improvement) of information systems to deal with the increasingly complex tasks of rights management and licensing.

All chapters have been updated since the third (2015) edition and several new chapters have been added, including a new chapter on the economics of collective management and a chapter on limitation-based remuneration rights. Factors considered include the following:

• cases where the unavailability of adequate licensing options makes authorized use of material protected by copyright or a related right difficult or impossible taking transaction costs into account;

  
  



• the growing importance of extended repertoire systems and different forms of collective licensing with extended effect;

  
  



• transnational and multi-territorial licensing;

  
  



• the relationship among collective management, rights to remuneration, and the ways in which CMOs acquire authority to license;

  
  



• the threat of monopolies or regional oligopolies for the management of online music rights;

  
  



• the impact of new technologies on collective rights management and licensing; and

  
  



• the role of 'families' such as the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC) and the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organizations (IFRRO).

  
  

The analysis covers the 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaties, the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Santiago Agreement, relevant EU policy documents and legislative instruments – including the 2014 Collective Rights Management Directive and 2019 Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive –and the work of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Part I presents a number of horizontal issues that affect collective management in almost every country. Part II is organized geographically, focusing on systems that are representative of the main models used in different countries and regions. Each country- or region-specific chapter provides a historical overview and a description of existing CMOs and their activities, provides financial information where available, describes how CMOs are supervised or controlled by legislation, and offers reflections on the challenges facing CMOs in that country or region. Some of these national and regional commentaries are the only such sources of information available in English.

Whatever the future of copyright, it is clear that users will continue to want access and the ability to legally reuse material, and that authors and other rights holders will want to ensure that they can place some reasonable limits on those uses, including the ability to monetize commercially relevant uses. CMOs will certainly be critical intermediaries in this process. The fourth edition of this important resource, with its key insights into the changing nature of collective management, will be of immeasurable value to anyone involved in shaping collective management policy or dealing with the increasingly complex legal issues that arise in copyright matters in the digital age, and even more in the age of artificial intelligence and the training of large language models.