Lenz on Uradex

Lenz Blog:

The European Court of Justice has decided the Uradex copyright case on June 1st.

The remarkable result of that case is that a collecting society can grant or deny permission for cable retransmission even without having received any transfer of copyright from the rightholders in question.

Uradex, the collecting society in question in this case, can represent authors without a mandate from them. They can grant or deny permissions without checking what the real copyright holders want, and possibly contrary to their will.

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Comments

[Kevin Hawkins]

I believe it's common outside the US for a copyright organization to be able to represent authors without them giving their express permission. One organization is designated as the official representative of all copyright holders, and receiving a copyright in that country means you're subject to that organization's actions. For example, On Jan. 12, 2006 the Russian State Library signed an agreement with COPYRUS, the Russian rightholder's society, allowing the library to reproduce documents and dissertations using photocopying and digitization without needing to contact individual authors. Details in Russian are at http://www.copyrus.org.ru/main.php?mid=2&doc=71&ma=02&ya=2005 .