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Total entries in this category: Published On: May 18, 2008 10:34 PM |
ACCC to re-authorise APRA's "input" arrangementsThe ACCC (Australian Competition and
Consumer Commission) has issued a press release announcing its draft decision to
re-authorise the arrangements by which APRA (Australasian Performing Right
Society) obtains rights to license the public performance and
APRA
pretty much has the exclusive right to license performance and communication of
music copyright in Australia. (You also have to deal with the record companies,
or PPCA, if you want to play with a recording of
the music and APRA under the guise of AMCOS if you want to make a
copy.(
This gives rise to two sets of monopoly/competition problems. First, there are the monopoly/competition problems relating to APRA's acquisition of rights to license the music, so-called input arrangements. It generally does this on the basis that the copyright owner (author and/or publisher) assign their rights to public performance and communication to APRA. Secondly, there are the terms on which APRA is prepared to license out its rights - surprisingly sometimes referred to as "output" arrangements - the terms on which shops, gyms and concert halls etc. get to play the music so that potential customers will have a more "pleasant" purchasing experience. The output arrangements are largely subject to a statutory licensing scheme under the Copyright Tribunal introduced way back before we had ever heard of anti-trust: see Copyright Act 1968 s 136 and following. All helpfully researched and analysed by the Copyright Law Reform Committee here. The input arrangements are a different matter and, when the broadcasters sued APRA for contravention of s 46 of the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth), APRA applied for an obtained - after a very long, no doubt very expensive fight with the ACCC in the Australian Competition Tribunal - various exemptions (final decision here). The draft determination doesn't shed much light on how the concessions extracted by the Australian Competition Tribunal have worked. In a case of pots calling kettles black, however, the ACCC takes a swipe at the expense of proceedings before the Copyright Tribunal and urges it to provide some incentives for direct dealings between composers and users by for example requiring a discount from blanket licences where the user has negotiated a deal directly with a composer. In the end, however, the ACCC (no doubt mindful of its treatment in the Australian Competition Tribunal) concedes that the benefits from APRA's arrangements, despite its insistence on granting only blanket licences, still seem to outweigh the costs. Of course, this is pretty much how it works all round the world (except in the USA) which doesn't mean that big rock groups haven't been happy, see here for example. Press release here; Draft determination and various submissions etc. from here. Posted: Friday - 09 September, 2005 at 05:22 PM | |